


Athrú

by Spamberguesa



Series: Ettelëaverse [5]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Epidemics, Experimental, F/M, Gen, Girl in Middle Earth, and what happens to them, cliffdiving, for a given value of girl, he's a dick but he cares about his people, i don't know much of anything yet, i don't know yet, language barriers won't be half so much of a problem this go-round, literal mind rape, lorna ain't dark but she's pretty morally grey, lorna is typhoid mary, maybe as long as in ettelea, mentions of past mind rape, obviously, out of necessity, poor thranduil, tauriel did warn you, that ship's going to take a long time to reach harbor, that's not a good thing, though not as creepy as mirkwood, thranduil is creepy no matter what universe you're in, thranduil only pretends to be an asshole, what might have been
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-10 18:21:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5596126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spamberguesa/pseuds/Spamberguesa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Translation from Irish: Changes</p><p>Even small variances in history can greatly change the outcome. What happens when Lorna the Stranger is dropped into Middle-Earth two months later in her timeline -- to her, and to everyone she meets. The future is not set in stone. Alternately, "What if Lorna was Typhoid Mary?"</p><p>AU of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/3808996/chapters/8487733"><i>Ettelëa</i>.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dúisigh

**Author's Note:**

> An AU of my _Ettelëa_ AU, this came about as the result of an idea I had while high as a kite on Vicoden. (Yay nerve damage, except not.) You don’t need to read _Ettelëa_ to understand this one, but for those who have, these little might-have-beens are the result of Lorna landing in Middle-Earth further down her timeline. This little experiment probably won’t be updated anywhere near as fast as the others, but what the hell. It had to be written.
> 
> For those of you who aren’t familiar with _Ettelëa_ , Lorna is from the series of books I wrote and have done nothing with, though they’re up on my AO3 profile. If you’re curious as to what happened to her just before the start of this, I direct you to [chapter ten](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2761277/chapters/6191939) of _The Curse of M._ As with _Ettelëa_ , reading those books isn’t necessary to understand the fic, but I’d love it if you did anyway.
> 
> In _Ettelëa_ , Lorna showed up in Mirkwood after crashing through the windshield of her van. In here, her immediate prior circumstances were…rather worse. Literal mind rape worse.
> 
> This didn't occur to me when writing _Ettelëa_ , but Lorna is being exposed to pathogens for which she has no immunity -- and the people of Dale have no exposure to her germs. It is, naturally, a recipe for disaster.

When Lorna woke, there was frigid murder in her heart.

She was weary, but not filthy – someone had cleaned her up and changed her trousers and hospital smock while she was unconscious – and so angry that it actually took her a moment to register the change in her surroundings. No longer was she in the Institute, on her hard cot beneath a flimsy blanket; now there was earth under her back, ridged with tree-roots.

The branches above – very _far_ above – her were nearly bare, save for a very few spring leaves. Her vision was blurred, her eyes still burning from last night’s tear gas, and her chest felt raw with every breath she drew. She was freezing, too, her body wracked with shivers.

This couldn’t be Von Ratched’s doing. He couldn’t get into her head, not now, and in any event, it felt too _real_. Had he drugged her? Probably. Still, her dreams, though vivid, weren’t anywhere near _this_ vivid. What had he done to her, aside from what she remembered?

Lorna struggled to her feet, rubbing her eyes. If this was a hallucination of some sort, moving around a bit ought to break it, but her legs felt alarmingly weak. Her mouth was parched, her throat sandpaper-dry, and she wondered what the hell she was to do now.

Von Ratched had to die, but she couldn’t do anything about him until she shook this delusion. The ground, covered in last year’s slimy leaves, was cold beneath her bare feet, and her first hesitant steps were wobbly until her equilibrium righted itself.

While it was true she hadn’t been in many forests, she was pretty sure they weren’t meant to be this quiet. No birds called, no little animals scurried along the trees. Maybe that was the first sign of the hallucination’s flaws. They could always be found, eventually; the human brain wasn’t capable of sustaining anything coherent for too long. The trees themselves were massive – they had to be ancient, and so thick that she’d bet no sunlight hit the ground when they all had leaves. It was a hell of a thing for her mind to cough up.

The red-gold rays of dying sunset pierced through them now, and hallucination or not, _that_ made her nervous. She was barefoot, poorly dressed, and unarmed. Thought of spending the night in this place wasn’t to be borne –

She wasn’t alone.

She couldn’t see or hear anyone, but she could _feel_ them – people, not animals, though she had no idea why she was so certain of that. She was being watched.

Lorna paused, glancing around. In her current mood, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what kind of people her mind would come up with. She thought of the infected from _28 Days Later_ , and immediately wished she hadn’t.

Fuck it. “I know you’re out there,” she said. Her voice was little more than a hoarse rasp, her throat on fire. “If you’re going to eat me, you might as well get on with it.”

The person who leapt down from the tree above her – yikes – was, tall, pretty, androgynous, and vaguely creepy. She was pretty sure it was a bloke, though his long dark hair looked better than hers ever had. She would have commented, except that he immediately drew his bow and pointed an arrow at her face.

What.

“Nice to see you, too,” she said, her heart lurching. Though maybe if he shot her, she’d wake up.

“Man le?” he said.

Oh, great. Of _course_ he’d speak gibberish.

“I got nothing, mate,” she said. Her badly fraying temper did not have the patience for this bullshit. Her stamina had mostly recovered, for all she was starving, achy, and thirsty as hell; if he wanted to shoot her, he could damn well shoot her. Either she’d wake up, or she’d die; she couldn’t say she’d mind either, at this point.

She gave her would-be captor a humorless grin, ducked beneath his arm, and bolted.

He cried out, but he didn’t shoot her, and she forced her aching legs into as fast a run as she could manage, dodging and weaving through fallen branches and sparse undergrowth. Even with all her calluses, her feet hurt like a bastard, and warm wetness on her toes told her the right was probably bleeding. At least she was warm enough now, her heart thundering, adrenaline coursing through her like liquid sunlight. Her eyes stung, her lungs burned, but she was moving, and that was what mattered.

Someone else jumped into her path, a woman with a fantastic head of red hair, but Lorna dodged her, grateful for once that she was so small. If she’d had the breath for it, she would have laughed, because the woman looked downright affronted.

She didn’t know how long she could keep this up, but she wasn’t given the chance to find out – she rounded a tree and nearly ran smack into what looked like the biggest cobweb in the bloody universe.

It brought her up short, and drew an aborted croak of a scream from her. Spiders were just about the only thing in the world Lorna Did Not Handle, but she _really_ didn’t handle them.

She scrambled backward, and made the extreme tactical error of looking up – just in time to see a spider the size of her damn van descending toward her.

Yeah, _nope_.

Lorna would freely admit that she screamed like a little girl when she ran – a scream that cut off when the tree that held the spider all but exploded, dropping it right behind her and spraying her with a shower of splinters. Fortunately, the rest of the tree collapsed onto it; when she hazarded a glance behind her, she found the damn thing had been pretty effectively squished.

The tree beside her creaked and cracked, the branches snapping and crashing all around her, which would at least slow down any more spiders. Coppery wetness on her lip told her that her nose was bleeding, but she didn’t care – at least, not until something hit her on the back of the head, and consciousness gave up.

\--

 _And this day started out so pleasantly_ , Faelon thought. What in Eru’s name a lone Edain was doing so far into the forest, he didn’t know, but naturally she could not just cooperate.

Tracking her was easy enough, but even an Edain could have followed the terrific crash of falling trees, and the unmistakable scream. Of course she’d have to go and run afoul of the spiders – but how had she managed to get this far before she did? Especially dressed as she was?

He didn’t know, but he had to find out. Provided she hadn’t just been eaten.

He found that Captain Tauriel had beaten him to it – a very confused Captain Tauriel.

The Edain herself was unconscious, having been hit on the head by a falling bough. The confusing – and disturbing – thing was the sheer amount of destruction around her. The trees looked as though some great boulder had crashed through them, splintered and broken. The scent of fresh wood and sap hung in the air, along with the stink of spider.

The captain looked at him, and he looked at her, and they both looked at the Edain. The woman was _tiny_ , her strange, thin clothing totally inadequate; her oversized grey tunic had short sleeves, and her pale blue trousers were too long. Her long black hair was much tangled, but it – and she – were too clean to have been wandering the forest for a week, and it would have taken her at least that long to get in this far. It was still very early in the spring – in clothes like these, she ought to have frozen to death once the sun went down, especially since she had no shoes. Between that and the destruction she’d somehow wrought, she presented more of a mystery than Faelon liked.

“We must take her back with us,” the captain said, though she didn’t sound happy about it. “If there are more like her, we need to know about it.”

Faelon glanced at the trees. “Are you sure that is safe?” he asked. Some of them looked like they had been ripped apart from the inside, the pale, splintered wood sticky with pulp.

Captain Tauriel sighed, shaking her head. “No,” she said. “But it is up to the King to decide what to do with her. If this was somehow her doing, she could have attacked us, and didn’t. If he thinks her too much a danger, he’ll send her to Bard, and he can decide what should be done with her.”

Faelon wasn’t entirely sure he liked that, but it wasn’t his job to like or dislike things. He just had to do what he was told. 

When he picked up the Edain, he found that her head was bleeding, as well as her nose. His fingers probed through her hair for injury, and found a long, shallow cut on her scalp – too shallow to need binding, though he put pressure on it anyway. She was surprisingly heavy for such a tiny, wiry creature; it felt like she was made of muscle and little else.

Night was falling fast, and even this early in the year, marching in the dark was unwise. They would have to make camp, and he only prayed this strange woman would hold off waking up until they were home.

\--

The presence of their odd mortal kept the usual fireside chatter subdued, unconscious though she was. Tauriel checked her for injuries, and was sobered by what she found.

The woman had a number of old scars, some of them vicious, but there were ugly purple bruises on both of her wrists, and what looked much like rope-burn. She had many faded bruises, too, on her legs and her arms and left side, and her left knee was badly swollen.

Whoever this woman was, someone had been torturing her, and recently. Very recently. And that meant there was likely another stranger in the forest, assuming he or she hadn’t already been eaten by spiders – or killed by this Edain.

“Whatever is going on here, I do not think it is simple,” Tauriel said to Faelon, holding up the woman’s limp arm. “Perhaps she is not the danger we need fear. I want the watch doubled tonight.”

His eyes widened a fraction, and he winced. “I do not envy you your report,” he said, looking at the woman’s wrist. 

Tauriel couldn’t blame him. The King had, to her bewilderment, practically forced her post back upon her after the Battle of the Five Armies, and though much of her still didn’t understand why, she tried to repay him by being as conscientious as she could. Unfortunately, in this she had little in the way of _facts_ to report, which he would not at all be pleased by.

She wrapped the little Edain in her cloak, and stared into the dancing flames. The nights were still bitterly cold once the sun set, but that was of little consequence to the Elves. However, it made her wonder all the more how this Edain had survived. She had no means of making a fire, and even bundled in Tauriel’s cloak she was shivering.

A very unpleasant thought entered Tauriel’s mind: perhaps it was only this day that the woman had escaped whoever had been torturing her. That would mean that the person – or people – were not far away.

Nobody was sleeping tonight.

\--

Lorna woke with a queasy, thumping headache, wrapped in the softest fabric she had ever felt. Her eyes still burned, her mouth tasted absolutely vile, and her bladder was about ready to burst. Where _was_ she?

Memory came sluggishly, and she groaned when she opened her eyes. Though it was barely dawn, the pale light seemed to stab straight into her brain, and she shut them again immediately.

This was real. This forest, the spiders – somehow, it was _real_. How had she got here? Why? For that matter, where was here?

And the others, her friends at the Institute – were they here, too? Out of the three of them, she’d only peg Geezer as likely to survive the spiders, because he was a tough old bastard who could probably live through nuclear apocalypse. If a zombie tried to eat him, _it_ would get sick and die.

She didn’t want to movie, or think, but her bladder really did hate her, so she forced herself to sit up. It wasn’t just her head that hurt; it felt like every muscle she had ached, and her throat remained sore as hell. In spite of her blanket, her limbs were numb and heavy, and she nearly fell when she tried to stand.

The redhead she’d evaded the night before gave her a look of alarm, but Lorna waved a vague hand to ward her off. “I’m fine,” she said, and Christ, her voice sounded even worse today. “I just need to pee.”

The woman’s expression was completely blank, and Lorna fought a groan. It would be just her luck if _none_ of them spoke English.

She pointed at a nearby bush, and mimed what her youngest nephew called the Pee Dance. _That_ cleared up the woman’s expression, and Lorna limped her way along the uneven ground. She’d ripped her big toenail clean off yesterday, she saw, but her feet were so cold that it didn’t hurt. Yet. 

Pissing outside was never any fun, but having only dried leaves for toilet paper just made it worse. Still, there was one item ticked off her long list of discomforts, and the rest could be dealt with, because she was free. Sort of. She was out of the Institute, which was what mattered. Wherever these people were taking her, it couldn’t possibly be worse than that hellhole.

Lorna limped back to the remains of the campfire, breathing in the clean, somehow living scent of smoke. “Can any’v you understand me?” she asked the redhead, as she sat down to inspect her toe. The nail was indeed gone, the bed crusted over with a black scab. Gross. “See, there might be others. My friends.” Getting eaten by a spider might not be _much_ worse than enduring Von Ratched and his ‘tests’, but it was still worse.

“Hannon le?” the woman asked, and Lorna sighed. She didn’t know if she should hope the others were here or not. The thought of what Von Ratched would do to them once he found she was gone made her shudder, but the alternative might well be a giant spiderweb, or death by exposure. She would have frozen if not for these people, and none of her friends would be any better dressed than her.

At least the spiders would kill them quickly. Von Ratched would draw it out. She knew too well what he could do to a person’s mind.

The memory sent cold horror crawling up her spine, and she leaned over to retch into the fire. There was nothing in her stomach to bring up – all she could do was split bile onto the coals, and vaguely wish she was dead herself. Bad enough he’d gone rooting around in her head like a Cracker Jack box, but what he’d done – what he’d forced her to _feel_ – God, she wished she could puke. Either that or submerge herself in scalding water, until all trace of him and the Institute were gone. She wanted to burn this damn hospital smock, and pee on the ashes for good measure.

Mostly, she wanted to go home. But home wasn’t safe anymore; she’d left her family because they would have been in danger if she’d stayed. Even the families of the cursed could wind up in very deep trouble.

A hand touched her shoulder, and Lorna lashed out on instinct – but it was only the redhead, who gave her a stricken look when she scrambled away. No doubt she thought Lorna was off her nut, but Lorna didn’t remotely care.

“Don’t touch me, all right?” she said, despite the fact that the woman wouldn’t understand. “Just…don’t.”

\--

Tauriel was at something of a loss. The little Edain obviously didn’t want to be touched, but they had half a day’s walk ahead, and she had no shoes. Still, Tauriel had a presentiment that picking her up would be a spectacularly bad idea. She could be allowed to walk until she was no longer capable.

The sun rose, lending golden beauty to the forest. In the five years since the battle, the darkness that marred it had retreated considerably; the spiders lingered, but their numbers were diminished, and the strange blight on the trees was fading. There was much to be grateful for, but the idea of some new foe taking up residence in it unnoticed made Tauriel very uneasy.

She wished the woman could tell her, but she seemed to have no more understanding of Westron than she did of Sindarin. Tauriel knew no other tongues of men, but surely one of the scholars would. This bedraggled creature might not wish them ill, but whatever had tortured her certainly would.

She kept up, at least, though her face grew ever grimmer. While she wasn’t old, Tauriel didn’t think she was overly young, either; her swarthy face had seen its share of weather, and there was silver threaded through her long black hair. She was the tiniest adult Edain Tauriel had ever seen; Tauriel was on the short side for an Elf, but this woman’s head barely reached her chin.

Someone, somewhere, had to be missing her. Her age might be hard to guess, but she was definitely old enough to have children. Her complexion, however, suggested that she was not from anywhere near this corner of Middle-Earth.

How did she _get_ here?

There was no way to ask, though the woman occasionally spoke, and Tauriel had a feeling she was trying out different languages, searching for a common one, and growing ever more frustrated when she failed.

Tauriel was still wondering what in Eru’s name she was to tell the King when the blast of a hunting horn split the morning air. The Edain froze, her eyes darting from tree to tree, poised for flight.

“It is all right,” Tauriel said, hoping her tone would soothe, even if her words wouldn’t be understood. Naturally, it had no effect. Not that she could really be blamed; the thunder of approaching hooves could only belong to one animal, and few Edain would have seen its like.

When the hunting-party approached, most were on foot. Only the King and a few of his generals were mounted – and as soon as the Edain woman saw the great elk, she let out what could only be a curse, scrambling backward.

“Cad é an ifreann é sin an rud? An raibh sé ag fás suas in aice le radaíocht sceitheadh fuilteach?” she said, the words a strangely musical gibberish.

“It is only an elk,” Tauriel said, a little helplessly. There was no point. She bowed to the King, as did the rest of the patrol, but the Edain looked ready to bolt. At least she wouldn’t get far if she did.

\--

All right, enough was enough. There was no way in hell that was a real animal.

All of these people were pretty creepy, but the bloke riding that monstrosity was by far the worst. She’d never seen anyone so pale, and his eyes looked like a god damn zombie’s. Thankfully, they didn’t linger over Lorna for very long.

She’d thought meeting up with these weirdos wasn’t such a bad thing, even if they did dress like medieval nutters, but one look at _that_ guy was enough to make her seriously reconsider. The song of a bitch was even more intimidating than Von Ratched, and that was _really_ saying something.

He was saying something to the redhead, who kept shooting her nervous glances. Oh, great. Lorna was glad she probably looked like hell; at least she couldn’t be counted as a threat.

She had to find a way back. She didn’t _want_ to, but she was of no use to anyone here, and Christ only knew what Von Ratched was doing to Ratiri in her absence. She never, ever wanted to face that fucker again, but she had to. There was no way she could leave her friends to his non-existent mercy. And really, these people would probably be glad to be rid of her.

\--

Thranduil did not at all want to hear what Tauriel had to say – especially as she seemed to be certain of next to nothing. She would not lie to him, however, nor withhold information; what she told him was what she knew.

Thought of some monstrous Edain taking up residence in his forest was not a pleasant one, but Edain were easily dealt with. This one spoke no tongue anyone recognized, but he doubted there was much she could tell him anyway. Her expression was terrified, yet calculating – he didn’t need to understand her to know she was contemplating flight.

She needn’t have worried. He had no interest in taking her back to the halls. Yes, there was something peculiar, something _off_ about her, but that only gave him all the more reason to be rid of her. Let a guard or two take her to Dale; she could be Bard’s problem.

Just now, she was staring at him. That wasn’t surprising; Edain often stared at Eldar, especially those unused to them. The wariness in her eyes was familiar – the puzzlement, however, was not. They flicked over his face, but kept straying to the left side, and an unwelcome curl of unease unfolded in his heart. There was no way at all she could be able to see what lay beneath his glamour, and yet –

And yet.

She said nothing, though it looked as though she wanted to. When she reached up and touched her own left cheek, he didn’t think she was even aware of her actions – but even so, a strange, heavy dread curdled in his stomach. She saw it. She _saw_ it.

_How?_

“Feredir, grab her,” he said, his voice entirely steady in spite of his disquiet. He would not explain himself, but he did not need to. No one dared question him.

The warrior did as instructed, catching her by the arm. He wouldn’t hurt her, though if she fought him, she might well hurt herself.

Her eyes, those oddly intense green eyes, widened – and she hauled back and punched him with surprising force for one so small. It wasn’t nearly enough to make him release her, but she grabbed the fingers of the hand that held her and pulled.

A truly hideous _crack_ split the air, followed by a hiss of pain, and _that_ won her freedom. She didn’t linger to take satisfaction in her victory, however; off she went, as fast as her tiny bare feet could carry her.

Thranduil didn’t need to order the guards after her – they spread out of their own volition, following much faster than any Edain could run, let alone one so small. He needed to know what she was, and if the other in the forest was like her.

What he would do with her after that…he didn’t know.

\--

 _Fuck this fuck this fuck this_ fuck this

It really was amazing, just how fast adrenaline could make a person run. Lorna had no idea where she was going, or if there was even a ‘there’ to go to – all that mattered right now was _away_.

What the hell was wrong with creepy guy’s face, and why could she only see it sometimes? She didn’t know, and wasn’t nearly curious enough to stick around to find out. The bloke who’d grabbed her had been far too strong – as strong as Von Ratched, or nearly. Either way, not someone she wanted having hold of her, thanks so much.

Those people, whoever they were, _what_ ever they were, were all much faster than her. She didn’t have a chance if she didn’t bring down a few trees, but her telekinesis wasn’t anything like precise, and if she overdid it, she’d just pass out again. She yanked as she went, a branch here, a splintered trunk there. All she had to do was slow them down enough to give her a decent head start, or so she hoped. 

Civilization was what she needed, but at the same time, it might be even more dangerous. A town or city full of these creepers would be even worse, but she had no shoes, no food, completely shite clothes, and no way to make fire. Alone out here, she’d be dead inside of two days, and that was if she didn’t get eaten by a spider first.

And yet it was still better than the Institute.

The snap of wood and tear of massive roots ripped from the ground sang within her veins, shoving aside some of her pants-pissing terror. She wasn’t going to get caught. She wasn’t going to get locked up again – not by them, not by anyone. No, she wasn’t willing to kill anyone to ensure that, but Lorna had never had a problem with hurting people. And in that regard, Von Ratched had only made her worse.

She couldn’t hear her pursuers, but she could sense them, sparks of life and thought fanned out behind her – not far enough behind her. Though her legs ached and her lungs burned, she put on what little extra speed she was capable of, spiky bushes slashing at her clothes and skin. Christ, she was going to come out of this so banged-up she’d probably scare off anyone else she met.

Dammit, there was a dropoff ahead, but she had too many people on either side for her to deviate course. All she could do was pelt toward the sunshine, and hope like hell she wasn’t about to leap to her death. Even if she was, she’d take splatting like a bug over being shut away again

Faster, faster, until she skidded to a halt at the edge of the cliff. It _was_ a cliff, too, albeit not overly high, a wide, churning river at its base. It was probably a survivable fall, though Lorna was no great swimmer. At least her clothing wouldn’t weigh her down.

Her pursuers were still eerily silent, but she felt their approach, and when she looked up, she saw an entire line of them. One or two actually had bows out – why the hell hadn’t they shot her? – but the rest were simply _there_ , watching, not even remotely out-of-breath.

The tall one, the extra creepy one, was looking at her in a way disturbingly reminiscent of Von Ratched. It was a look that said, _You are intriguing, but subhuman_ , and she wasn’t about to stick around to endure whatever it might herald. She looked at him, and at the group, grinning a little. She’d split her lip on something, probably one of the spiky bushes, and she could taste the salt of her own blood, her heart thundering, high off her own adrenaline.

“Yeah, fuck off, twats,” she said, gave the lot of them a double-barreled finger – and jumped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeeeah, very different from _Ettelëa_ , even if some things remain universal. Lorna will meet up with the Elves again, in not much time at all – but not before she’s done a few things she’ll come to deeply regret.
> 
> Lorna can’t mind-rape Elves. She can, however, mind-rape humans, and just now she is beaten up, psychologically traumatized, terrified, and very, very desperate. She had Von Ratched in her head literally yesterday. That kind of thing leaves a mark.
> 
> Pity the first human she meets. 
> 
>  
> 
> What Lorna says about the elk is, “What the hell is that thing? Did grow up near a bloody radiation leak?” in Irish.
> 
> Title means “Wake Up” in Irish. Drop me a review and let me know what you think of this little deviation.


	2. Éalú

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Lorna meets a human (and does something she deeply regrets), learns a bit about where she is (though not the whole truth), and makes a friend (who doesn’t actually know what she did to him). Meanwhile, the Elves are disturbed.
> 
> There are mentions of Lorna’s mind-rape in this chapter. While it was mental rather than physical, the psychological aftermath is much the same, so a trigger warning might be necessary.

Lorna had expected the water to be cold. She hadn’t realized it would be like dropping into the bloody Bering Sea.

The shock of it drove the breath from her lungs, the impact alone enough to make her choke. She panicked even before the icy water closed over her head, struggling for the surface, thanking God her clothes were so light. No, she didn’t want to be locked up again, but neither did she wish to drown.

Her head broke the surface, but only for a moment – just long enough for her to draw a breath that was mostly air, but also partly water, leaving her coughing violently, her lungs somehow both frigid and burning at the same time. The current would have been too strong even for a good swimmer, which she most definitely was not; dog-paddling was as much as she’d ever learned. No matter how hard she kicked, the water didn’t seem to want to let her reach the shore, firmly shoving her back into the center of the river and trying to suck her downward. At least she was so cold that she barely registered the rocks she bashed into.

Dammit. _Dammit_. This fucking river did not get to eat her – there was too much she had to do. White-hot rage crept through her veins, warming her, sharpening her vision.

Fear had been the initial catalyst of her telekinesis, something she couldn’t direct worth a damn. Thanks to Von Ratched, rage worked even better, allowing her some blunt measure of control. She reached out, catching whatever rocks she could on the stony bank, tearing with every ounce of her strength. If she couldn’t reach the shore, she’d damn well bring it to her.

She’d thrown around so much telekinesis already, on top of her last horrible day at the Institute, that pure agony jagged through her, hot and shocking as lightning. It was almost enough to black her out, but she kept pulling, driven by pure stubbornness, until a portion of the bank collapsed ahead of her, leaving an impromptu dam. A dam she was about to hit with far more force than she’d like.

Lorna didn’t quite have enough time to brace herself before she crashed into the pile of stone, but she was pretty sure nothing broke along the way, and her body was so numb that it didn’t hurt nearly as much as it was probably going to later. She started shivering as soon as she hauled herself out of the water, grateful for the anemic warmth of the sun.

For a long while she lay on the shore, hacking and gasping. She’d been dragged so far downstream that even if her pursuers were still after her, they’d have a hell of a time finding her.

It was just about the only thing she had going for her. She had absolutely zero in the way of survival skills – she didn’t know how to hunt, and had nothing to fish with. No matter which direction she walked, she had no guarantee of finding civilization. For all she knew, she’d been dropped in the middle of Canada, and run afoul of some fucked-up, medieval-style cult.

 _Who like to dabble in genetic experimentation_ , she thought, curling into a ball. That animal, whatever the hell it actually was, simply did not occur in nature. It couldn’t. It didn’t take a zoologist to figure _that_ out. And as for those goddamn spiders…no. Just no. She hoped like hell they stayed in the creepy forest, and left this far more normal area alone.

Ugh, how did she get here? Just now, she wasn’t sure she even cared where _here_ was; the stone beneath her was vaguely warm, and it was all she had that was worth focusing on. The only thing she could be absolutely certain of was that Von Ratched had not let her go. Whatever had got her out here had managed to bypass him, and she wasn’t sure if that was brilliant or fucking terrifying. She wasn’t sure she wanted to meet anything that could outclass him, even if it was on her side. Then again, it wasn’t like she could be sure it actually _was_ on her side.

Well. She didn’t know what the hell she was going to do, but she couldn’t stay like this. The smock and trousers were so thin they’d dry soon enough – sooner, if she moved enough to generate more body heat. Since she had no idea which direction to go, she decided to follow the river, reasoning that at least she wouldn’t go thirsty. It headed northwest, if she had it right.

“Christ,” she muttered, the word little more than a gravelly croak. Were Ratiri and the others somewhere out here? She couldn’t imagine she was the only one. Not that she stood much chance of finding them save for blind luck.

She didn’t get far before she had to stop. Now that her whole body wasn’t numb, her entire right side was on fire. She didn’t think she’d broken any ribs, but she was afraid she might have cracked a few.

Goddammit. Oh well – at least if she was going to die out here, she’d got some fresh air and sunshine first.

She just wished the other were here.

Lorna sank onto the mossy ground, watching the glittering river. It smelled so achingly wonderful out here – the scent of fresh earth and springtime – and all she could do was worry. Ratiri would get the worst of it in her absence, but Katje and Geezer wouldn’t fare much better.

Von Ratched had to know she hadn’t actually _escaped_ , however. He might be King of the Arseholes, but he wasn’t stupid; all he’d have to do would be read Ratiri’s mind to know that she had not, in fact, managed to sneak out. He could search every mind in the Institute and find the same thing. Hell, maybe her disappearance would prove a distraction for him.

Oh, she hoped so.

Meanwhile, she ought to at least try to keep going. Her ribs hated her, but she hated them right back, so they were even. Still, she had to bite back a scream as she hauled herself to her feet. Her feet ached, her head ached, her side hurt like a bitch, and she was probably going to be one gigantic bruise tomorrow, but she was free. _Why_ , she didn’t yet know, but she assumed she’d find out, provided she didn’t keel over and die before she found another person. Given that it had now been a full two days since she’d last eaten, that was a distinct possibility.

But there was nothing for it. On she went, toward God knew what.

\--

Though Dale and Esgaroth now had more than enough trade, they still sold barrels of wine to the Wood-Elves.

The job of bargeman was a dull one, but Oleg liked it. It was simple, straightforward, and rarely involved interaction with other people. Which was why he was incredibly surprised by what he found on the riverbank.

She was so small that at first he thought her a child, curled on her side amid the ferns. For a moment he feared she was dead, but when he drew near he saw that she was still breathing, albeit with a faint wheeze he could barely hear. Where had she _come_ from? While he didn’t know everyone who lived in Dale and Esgaroth, a woman this unusually diminutive would have stood out.

He gave her bony shoulder a gentle shake, and jumped a little when her eyes snapped open. One tiny, rough hand grabbed his – and then there was only pain. It stabbed through him like a knife to the brain, so sudden and so shocking his head spun.

He tried to jerk away, and failed; small she might be, but she was incredibly strong, her fingers closed around his like a vice. The pain ebbed a bit, but nausea churned in his gut, the taste of bile sour on his tongue. Her wide green eyes were locked with his, but he didn’t know if she actually saw _him_ or not; they were filled with desperation, but she wasn’t as desperate as he was. It was only with great effort that he managed to wrench his hand out of her grasp, and she immediately lapsed back into unconsciousness, boneless as a doll.

What in Eru’s name had she just done to him, and how? He’d never heard of female wizards, but he couldn’t imagine anythin else being able to do – well, to do whatever it was she’d done. The pain vanished as soon as she was no longer touching him. His heart hammered, however, his limbs unsteady with shock and adrenaline.

If she _was_ a wizard, she wasn’t a very good one, for her unconsciousness had to be the result of a beating. Her face and arms – very bruised arms – were covered in fresh scratches, her odd clothing torn and stained.

Oleg rubbed his temple, trying to will his pulse to slow. Her wounds were so fresh that he wasn’t willing to linger, lest whatever did this to her find him as well. He’d pick up the barrels later, when he had a party with him.

But what was he to do with her? Clearly she had the ability to hurt people, in some way he didn’t understand. Bard might not thank him for bringing such a person into Dale, but Oleg couldn’t in good conscience just leave here. He couldn’t pretend to be a good man, but he wasn’t so terrible as to leave an unconscious woman to the elements and animals, even if she’d somehow managed to cause him a great deal of pain. It wasn’t as though he could be certain she’d done it on purpose, given her state.

Whoever or whatever had done this to her, Bard would want to know of it. What would happen to her then would be out of Oleg’s hands.

\--

_Lorna dreamed._

_The dreams were a confused jumble, images and memories not her own, without form or context. Fire, the heat searing her on all sides, smoke all but choking her. A town built on water, steeped in fear and discontent, the dry wood going up like a torch when hit with rivers of flame._

_Hunger, a child’s fear, frigid water, marching, marching for days. To her, these people and their clothing looked terribly strange; within these memories, they were lifelong companions, lucky – or not-so-lucky – survivors._

_They spoke, and oh, how strange this was. To her, their words were gibberish, but this man, this Oleg, understood them perfectly, and the sheer dissonance it forced upon her mind was almost more than she could bear. He was of an age with her, thirty-three, unmarried and unsociable yet fiercely loyal to his own people. People of Esgaroth, on the Long Lake, and why did that sound familiar?_

_Esgaroth, Long Lake, Dale, and oh, she knew that name – she, Lorna, not Oleg, but where the hell had she heard it? It sounded like it ought to be English, but she knew of no such place._

_Fire, more fire, and – holy Christ, no. Just no. A dragon soared within her mind, within these memories that were not hers, burning the town over and over in his/her nightmares. A real dragon, except dragons weren’t bloody real. Had she found the memory of someone who liked eating too many magic mushrooms? That would just be her luck._

_Wind now, and snow, long days navigating winter ice floes in search of fish gone elusive with the season. A hard life, with no sign of anything like technology. Why? Why, why, why? The word ran through her mind in a loop, only occasionally calling up vague half-answers._

_She wasn’t in the Institute anymore, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t in very grave trouble._

\--

After a fall like that, the tiny Edain was almost certainly dead, but Thranduil wouldn’t rest until someone had found her body.

How could she have seen the scar? She _had_ seen it – of that, he was sure. There had been recognition in her unholy green eyes; he could only be grateful she hadn’t drawn attention to it. Very few of his people knew of its existence, and he meant to keep it that way.

His people now spread out along the bank of the river, and he with them, searching in the waning evening light. The slight warmth of the day had long since died, leaving the air chill and clammy with the last, lingering vestiges of winter.

Tauriel approached, silent as a ghost, and bowed. “My lord,” she said, “we have found tracks, and…something else.”

The little woman had survived the fall? Survived, and then managed to walk? “Show me,” he said, following her through the deepening twilight. 

What she led him to disturbed him. He’d known the strange woman had somehow been wrecking the trees in his forest, but this – this was beyond a few trees.

The riverbank had been pulled outward, soil and stone, forming a strange half-dam. It had been scooped straight out of the dry land, the scent of freshly-turned soil still heavy in the air. A tangle of branches lay across it, the brush dragged out of the ground by the roots.

What, precisely, were they dealing with?

Hunting a creature who could do such a thing might not be wise, but he had little choice. The safety of his people was foremost in his mind – if she proved to be a danger, he had to kill her. And he wouldn’t know what peril she might pose until he found her. It was probably too much to hope that she would do him the courtesy of dying along the way.

\--

Lorna would have gladly slept forever, but her ribs decided it was time she woke up and took notice of them. The fuckers.

She was lying on wood, and though something heavy and warm was wrapped around her, she was freezing. Oleg, in his memory, was a bargeman, ergo this must be his barge. Well done, Holmes.

His memories also told her she wasn’t on Earth.

The thought was ridiculous, but if there was one thing she’d learned about her damn curse, it was that people couldn’t lie in their own heads. She had no doubt Von Ratched could create false memories, but Von Ratched, she hoped to God, wasn’t here. And this was probably too elaborate even for him – to create a whole language was no easy thing. With Oleg’s complexion, he ought to be speaking Swedish or Norwegian or something like that, but it sounded nothing like any of those, and his mind called it ‘Westron’. Admittedly, Lorna was nowhere near a linguistic scholar, but she’d never heard of such a language.

So where did that leave her? She was limited by what she could see in his memory, and he obviously wasn’t used to contemplating the world in which he lived. She could well understand that; she hadn’t done it much herself, until the curses hit. Christ, she hoped she hadn’t hurt him – when he’d touched her, she’d reacted without thinking, instinct latching onto his mind like a remora. Even if she hadn’t harmed him, she’d probably scared the shit out of him, so why had he taken her with him? Moreover, he hadn’t even tied her up or anything.

Lorna opened her eyes, and found herself looking up at more stars than she had ever seen in her life. The moon was full, and seemed somehow bigger than she was used to, as if it was closer to wherever she was. Water splashed gently against the hull of the barge, a strangely peaceful sound. Yeah, she was colder than cold, and yeah, just about everything that could ache, ached, but she was free, and there were so very many stars.

Thought of Ratiri, Katje, and Geezer entered her mind, but she couldn’t let herself dwell. If she did, she’d go mad with worry, and if she went mad, she’d be of no use to anyone or anything. She had to get back, and she had to be able to think enough to do it. Focus on the now, not the future or the past. Once upon a time, and not so very long ago, she’d lived her life like that: moment to moment, without thought or care for what she might meet.

Oleg said something, the sound of his voice making her jump, and she had to hunt his memory to translate what he said: “Are you awake?”

“Yes,” she said in English, and shook herself, digging up the word in Westron. “Yes. Thank you. I am bad with your language.” Gaining fluency from someone else’s memory was not, she thought, going to be an easy thing. Yeah, she had something of an ear for languages, but she was hardly a prodigy.

She rolled onto her left side, hissing at the pain. “Did I hurt you?” He _looked_ fine – he was a big man, and looked about as Scandinavian as his name implied, with pale blond hair, deep blue eyes, and a face red with sun and windburn. His clothes were as strange as those of the people in his memory, dark and rough and without any modern touches her eyes could see, and the moonlight was bright enough that she ought to have spotted something.

“It hurt, yes,” he said, looking at her with undisguised curiosity, “but I do not think it harmed me. What did you do?”

Lorna frowned. She doubted she could properly explain it in English, let alone Westron. “I do not know words to tell you,” she said, quite honestly. She’d had her curse less than a year, and the only explanations she’d had had call come from Von Ratched. Unfortunately, she had no way of knowing if he’d told her the truth or not.

“Are you a wizard?” Oleg asked, and she very nearly burst out laughing.

“No,” she said. “No, not a wizard.”

“You are hurt,” he said, stating the blatantly obvious. “What happened?”

She shut her eyes, and forced herself to it up, despite the pain that jagged all through her. “There was a man,” she said. “A man like me, but strong. Stronger. He does not like me.” More than that she wouldn’t say, in Westron or in English. What he’d done to her, to her mind, was something she would never speak of to _anyone_. He’d done the one thing he’d known she wouldn’t be able to stand, and while she’d hurt him for it, she hadn’t hurt him enough.

“He did all this to you?” Oleg asked, and even in the moonlight she could see anger flash through his eyes.

Lorna managed a brief, dry, slightly bitter smile. “Not all,” she said. “Also I fell off a cliff, running. There was no place else to go but down.”

Unbelievably, Oleg’s memory labeled her pursuers as Elves. _Elves_. That tickled her own memory even more strongly than everyone else, but she still couldn’t latch onto anything concrete. Everyone knew Elves and fairies and all that were a bloody myth – everyone but Oleg, apparently, who took their existence so for granted that it staggered her. And all right, they really _did_ look too pretty to be human, but still. 

The curses she could accept, mostly because she had to. There were some that called them magic, but her mind had always shied away from the idea, because magic wasn’t real. Oh, she’d always been superstitious, but superstition wasn’t _magic_. But now – there was no denying the curses. They’d hit far too many people. Elves weren’t that much of a leap, for all she wished they were.

He shook his head. “You’ve a fool’s luck,” he said. She couldn’t exactly deny it. “I’m taking you to Esgaroth – we’ll get you some proper clothes there, and have a look at all your injuries. I’ve got to take you on to Dale, so you can speak to King Bard.”

Christ, how in hell could she pay him back for that? Once she was better, she supposed she could help him load barrels or something. She was little, but she’d always been very strong, and the telekinesis had only augmented that, even if it really was cheating. “You let me work for you, later,” she said. “Pay you for it.” God only knew what these people used for money. Did they even have money, or did they trade for everything? Their clothing looked downright medieval, so maybe they just bartered.

Oleg shook his head. “Bard will take care of it,” he said. “He’ll be wanting to see you. That’s worth more than some clothes and a healer.”

Bard…Bard. That was even more familiar than anything else, but her brain still refused to cough up actual recognition. If she’d heard of him – of any of this – it had to be a long time ago, before her adolescence and all the drugs that had gone with it.

Lorna sighed, and winced at the pain in her ribs. “I do not know how much use is what I have to say,” she said, knowing she was mangling the grammar and unable to help it.

“This man,” Oleg said, suddenly tentative, “did he hurt you? In…other ways?”

It took her a moment to work out his meaning. “No,” she said, and it was technically true. He had done her no harm, and caused her no pain at all – had only touched her hair. What he had done had been much worse, as he’d known it would be.

The thought made her shudder, and she sat on the reaction, hard. If she let on too much, Oleg wouldn’t believe her.

“What is your name, lady?”

“Lorna,” she said, wrapping the coat tighter around herself. “Lorna Donovan.”

“I am Oleg,” he said. “I will look after you.”

\--

Tauriel had no idea how she had done it, but the woman had made it a good three miles downriver before collapsing. There her tracks were joined by much larger footprints, these those of someone – most likely a man – wearing heavy boots. The only Edain that came this far from the lake were the bargemen; most likely, one had found her, and taken her with him. If he had any brain in his head – and most of the Edain in this part of the world seemed to – he too would wonder just what had attacked her, and not wanted to linger to discover it.

It gave Tauriel pause. If one of the bargemen had in fact found the Edain woman, she would be well away by now, and no longer their problem. The King had not wanted her running loose too near the Woodland Realm, but if she were taken to Esgaroth or Dale, she’d be relatively far away. She was in no condition to return any time soon, and judging by her reaction to the Elves, she likely wouldn’t want to.

Still, the King had given the order to pursue, and Tauriel hesitated to countermand him just because their quarry had gone further afield than expected. Once upon a time, she wouldn’t have thought twice about calling off the search, but she wasn’t half as reckless now as she had once been.

She turned, making her way back to the hunting party. The river was a glittering ribbon in the moonlight, the stars massed above like a spill of diamonds, and it was so cold than an Edain as underdressed as their mysterious woman would freeze without aid. She didn’t know just what bargemen carried in their boats, if they had spare coats or blankets. 

The King, she found, was examining a few of the tiny, bare footprints, almost untraceable even for Elven eyes. He was almost impossible to read, even for her, but she’d swear he was worried.

“My lord,” she said, “I believe one of the Edain of Dale or Esgaroth found her and took her away with him. Shall I call off the search, or do you wish us to pursue?”

The King rose, and though his expression was entirely impassive, there was in fact a faint flicker of concern in his eyes – very, very faint, but nevertheless there. “Pursue,” he said. “If Bard is willing to keep her, and she is willing to stay, she is little danger to us, but I must know for certain if that is the case.”

“And if it is not the case?” Tauriel asked, a little cautiously. “What do we do then?” King Thranduil could be very cold, but he was not in the habit of killing Edain, provoked or not. He reserved that for orcs and spiders. While this Edain had some manner of unknown ability, she hadn’t actually _attacked_ any of them – she’d just tried to discourage pursuit. Yes, she was technically a danger, but by all evidence, she simply wanted to be left alone.

The King frowned. “That remains to be seen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Lorna. At least you have a friend, even if you’re also being chased by Elves with dubious intentions. And at least this go-round you’re not stuck being completely unable to understand anybody.
> 
> Why didn't she do this in _Ettelëa_? She didn't know how. Von Ratched is a shit, and did some horrible things to her, but he also taught her a bit.
> 
> Title means “Escape” in Irish. As always, your reviews fill me with light and love, and let me know if I’m headed in the right direction or not.


	3. Frustrachas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Lorna reaches Dale (and is sick as a dog), Bard has Elven visitors (who unsettle him), and Thranduil is extremely frustrated (for good reason).

Oleg was more than a little worried.

His passenger – Lorna – had soon fallen asleep again, and he’d been content to let her, for he appreciated silence. However, when they reached Esgaroth, she wouldn’t wake up. Given her injuries, he didn’t dare shake her very hard, but he had an unfortunate feeling that no amount of shaking would wake her.

She was burning with fever, too, though her skin was ashier than ever. It was too soon for any infection to have set in from any of her wounds, but pneumonia could sneak up on a person with the speed and stealth of winter fog. And if it _was_ pneumonia, he had to get her up the lake as soon as possible, for the healer in Esgaroth wasn’t equipped to deal with any but the most basic injuries a fisherman might suffer. Only Dale would have what was needed – but only if they got there in time. Oleg was no healer, but like everyone, he knew there came a point when someone was past saving.

Elves were immortal, and Dwarves so long outlived mortal men and women that they might as well have been, far hardier than any other race in Middle-Earth. They didn’t understand what it was to walk each day cheek-to-cheek with death. The Elves, of course, had no sickness, but there was little enough that could affect the Dwarves, either; among them, things like pneumonia were very rare. Oleg had wondered, more than once, why Eru and Aulë had each seen fit to create their own fantastically designed races, only for Eru to then create men and women, who were at a disadvantage to both of them in almost everything. 

Musings like this were why he preferred to work alone. Most others looked at him like he was cracked.

In any event, Lorna was damn ill, and the ice at the north of the lake was still bad enough that it cost him a full day. She was so little the innkeeper had given her one of his daughter’s old dresses, and the healers had done what they could before wrapping her back up, with four extra blankets he’d return later.

Thank bloody Eru she did wake – sort of – when they reached the docks. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused, but they were open, and she said something in what he presumed was her native tongue. Her voice was hoarse and cracked, and he shook his head.

“I don’t understand you, lass,” he said.

“Where are we?” she tried again, in Westron.

“Home,” he said, hopping out to tie the boat. “You’re sick – I’m taking you to a healer.”

Obstinate creature, she tried to stand on her own, and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her. He tried to pick her up, and now she was the one who shook her head. What she said was mixed up with her own language, but he got the gist of it: the day she couldn’t walk was the day she was buried. He didn’t bother arguing that that might just be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There was no sense fighting her on it; she’d flag soon enough, given how heavily she was leaning on him. Even through his coat he could feel the heat of her fever, and she smelled of sour sweat and sickness.

And yet she lurched her way along beside him, grim-faced, occasionally hacking great, dry coughs that made his chest hurt just listening to her. At least, if the poor lass was going to die, she could do it in relative comfort, rather than in his boat.

They drew a number of curious stares, and several of the fishermen ran to help, but Lorna stubbornly refused. Oleg knew the sort – their pride was all they had, and they’d not give it up for anything.

Though the grey light of dawn was giving way to sunrise, the lanterns of the porter-house were still lit, the windows warm and gold, and Lorna tried to stagger toward it.

“Not there, lass,” he said. “It’s into the city we’re going, if we get there before noon.” He picked her up, and nearly got kicked in the head for his trouble.

“Put me down when we hit the gate,” she said muzzily.

It wasn’t a terribly long way – perhaps half a mile – and he doubted she’d be awake when they got there. The pale walls of Dale loomed tall and strong, a far cry from what they’d been five years ago – as was the city within it. Richer by far than ever the original Esgaroth had been, no one in Dale knew hunger or want. Some were better off than others, but the poverty that had defined much of Esgaroth was absent.

There were only two gates, both heavily fortified: one faced the lake, while the other looked across the former Desolation to Erebor. Both were almost invariably busy, but he and his hacking companion were admitted to the head of the queue. Lorna was lucid enough that he set her on her feet, not wanting to _actually_ get kicked in the head.

“It’s a day for strange visitors,” Percy said, waving them through. “We’ve a party of Elves with Bard, though they’ve said nothing of their purpose.”

Lorna let out a stream of what could only be curses, which Oleg was quick to blame on her fever – and to assure Percy it was only pneumonia, not some exotic disease from foreign parts. They’d weathered a few of those already.

The thought that Lorna had truly run afoul of the Elves worried him, though not unduly. They were a suspicious lot, wary of outsiders – though the fact that they had possibly followed her was cause for concern. He’d never head of them doing _that_ before.

Well, they’d not get any explanation from her yet. He led her through the bustling streets, watching her watch the crowd. Sick as she was, there was still a wariness to her. After whatever had been done to her, he couldn’t fault her for it.

Dale was always crowded, and its architecture was apparently quite famous. Nobody commented on the fact that most of the buildings, like the walls, were largely made of new stone. They’d salvaged what they could after the battle, but it hadn’t been nearly enough.

Esgaroth had been almost completely drab, so they made up for it now with bright pennants, and flower gardens in the spring and summer. Balin, one of the few Dwarves who remembered the city of old, had advised them how best to recreate it.

Lorna was in no condition to appreciate it, but he didn’t doubt that once she was well, some proud citizen would take her own a tour. Having something to be proud of was still rather a novelty to most who had once lived in Esgaroth.

There were enough people now that they had a proper surgery, as opposed to the front parlor of the healer’s house, and several healers who worked in shifts. It was a large building, with several rooms for the sick and injured, and an over-sized cupboard of herbs and remedies from all over Middle-Earth. Even after four years, it still smelled faintly of new wood, and the warmth was damned welcome after their cold journey.

It was currently empty save for old Astrid, the healer on duty, which was a blessing – the fewer people he had to explain Lorna to just yet, the better. Oleg still didn’t know what she’d done to make his head hurt as it had, but he prayed she wouldn’t do it to anyone else.

Astrid took one look at her, staggering and feverish, in clothes clearly not her own, and dragged her back to one of the rooms, settling her in a rocking chair beside the fire. Even at sixty-odd, Astrid was a big strapping bull of a woman, near as tall as Oleg, with a brisk, no-nonsense, overbearing manner that even Bard wouldn’t cross.

“What have we got here?” she asked, laying her wrist on Lorna’s forehead. “Aside from a fever you could fry an egg with.”

“Pneumonia, I think.” He told Astrid how he’d found Lorna, leaving out the inexplicable headache for now. “Her Westron’s poor, and somebody’s been torturing her recently. I don’t think we’ll get much out of her until the fever’s run its course, though.”

Astrid rolled back Lorna’s sleeve, and frowned. The bruise on her wrist had darkened yet further, an ugly purple-black; whatever she’d been bound with, she’d fought it like mad. “Somebody had best warn the Elves they’ve a monster on the loose,” she said.

“If they don’t already know.” It was entirely possible the Elves had caught him, and had come to Dale to ask if he belonged to anyone. Oleg devoutly hoped he didn’t.

He wasn’t about to go ask himself. He’d invested too much in keeping Lorna alive to risk dealing with potentially hostile Elves.

\--

Bard had a headache.

It was early in the year for Elves to make their way to this end of the lake, but he had an entire party of them in his sitting-room, all looking very…neutral. They always looked neutral, but somehow they contrived to be even moreso than usual.

“I don’t know anyone of that description,” he said, pacing, “but that doesn’t mean nobody else does – not with how much the city’s grown.”

Their captain, the red-haired lad responsible for his daughter’s lives, somehow managed to look even more neutral. “If she makes it this far, she will be injured,” she said. “I must warn you that she has the capability of being a danger, but I do not believe she wishes to be. We frightened her badly, but she did not attack – she fled.”

A _danger_? Bard didn’t want to know why Elves would consider a tiny mortal woman a danger, but he asked anyway. “What did she do?”

For the first time, the captain looked ever so slightly uncomfortable. “She moves things without touching them,” she said, after a pause. “It is some sorcery unknown to us. She only used it in an attempt to keep us from pursuing her, however. Someone in our forest, someone we have yet to discover, tortured her before we found her, and I do not believe she had ever seen Elves before. In truth, I think the King frightened her out of her wits.”

 _That_ Bard could well believe. King Thranduil was intimidating even to those who knew him; to a stranger, he could easily prove terrifying. “I will send word, if we find her,” he said. “Can you be certain she does not wish to bring us harm?”

“Certain?” the captain said, watching him pace. “No, not certain. She could not understand us, nor we her, but I sensed no malice in her. Fear, yes, and anger, but it was anger at whatever had harmed her. There were several occasions she could easily have attacked or even killed us, and she did not.”

The captain seemed suspiciously determined to foist this woman off on him, but he trusted her not to deliberately place his city and his people at risk. It was not the way of Dale to turn away the needy, and if this woman was injured, they would at least see her back to health.

“We will look after her,” he said. “If she does not wish to stay when she is well, she can leave with the caravans when they come.” 

The captain looked distinctly relieved, so much so that he was curious.

“I do not know what was done to her,” she said, when he asked, “but given her bruises, it was extensive. I cannot fault her fleeing us, or using what methods she had available to escape.”

Bard supposed he couldn’t, either. He would tell the guards to watch for her.

\--

As it turned out, there was no need. When bard escorted the Elves to the gate, Percy told him she’d already arrived.

“Sick, she was,” he said. “Oleg had hold of her, for she could barely walk. He’s taken her to the healers.”

Terrible as it was, that was rather convenient. Bard made for the house of healing, not surprised when Captain Tauriel followed. There was enough warmth in the bright sun that he was glad for a chance to be outside, away from what seemed like a desk filled with endless correspondence and petitions.

In the healers’ house, he found not only Oleg and Astrid, but also Sven, a man in his forties who had apprenticed for a time with the healers of Minas Tirith. He was the only man among the healers, and unfortunately, they rarely let him forget it.

“It’s rest she needs,” Astrid was saying, her broad face fixed in a scowl. “I’ve given her a tonic for the fever and the cough. She doesn’t need you poking at her. A man as a healer – it’s not decent, especially not with a sick _woman_.”

Sven drew himself up to his full (rather impressive) height, his eyes narrowing. They were an unsettling shade of blue, very like that of the sled-dogs used by the northern traders in winter. “Mistress Astrid, I have no intention of _poking_ anything,” he said, and Bard had to fight an incredibly juvenile snort. Sven never did seem to pause to consider what something would sound like before he said it. “I merely need to see her.”

“I will go with you, if I may,” Captain Tauriel said.

Her gentler – and, more importantly, female – voice seemed to mollify Astrid. “Very well,” she said. “Bard, you may as well go with them. _You’re_ not a pervert.”

Bard didn’t comment, mostly because he knew there was no point. Sven gave an irritated sniff, stalking into one of the little rooms. The curtains were drawn back, the window leaving a square of sunshine on the pale stone wall.

The woman herself was little more than a lump of blankets and black hair, but it seemed enough for the captain to identify her, for the Elf relaxed infinitesimally.

Sven knelt beside the bed, trying to find the woman’s face under all that hair. As soon as he touched her cheek, her eyes snapped open.

She recoiled, and in doing so made him jump – but he had no time to do anything more, for she seized his collar and slammed her forehead into his nose. It made a truly hideous _crack_ , and then there was blood everywhere, pouring from the poor man’s nose like a river.

Bard jumped, and he wasn’t the only one – out of all of them, only Captain Tauriel remained sanguine, or at least appeared to. He would swear, however, that Astrid choked back a laugh.

The woman scrambled to her feet, standing on the bed, unnervingly green eyes tracing over the lot of them. To Bard’s surprise, the fear left them, replaced by something that looked very like exasperation. They settled on him, and she said something rapid-fire in her own tongue, between coughs.

“I knew you’d do it,” Astrid snorted. “I knew you’d wake her up. Well done.”

“Who are you?” the woman asked, her Westron so heavily accented it was almost incomprehensible.

Beside Bard, the captain blinked. “I thought you could not understand us,” she said.

“I did not, then. Now, I do. Who are you, and where am I?” Her expression had shifted to one of intense concentration, as though she were actively hunting for words.

“You are in Dale, my lady,” Bard said, and felt a bit ridiculous calling this waif ‘lady’. “I am Bard, lord of this city. Please, do not damage my healers further.”

She sat, warily, her gaze traveling to the stricken Sven, who was trying fruitlessly to staunch his nose with his sleeve. “He scare me,” she said, completely unapologetic. “Do not touch me. Anyone.”

Captain Tauriel looked at the poor healer, and at the woman. “It is the eyes, isn’t it?” she asked. “His eyes disturbed you.”

The little woman glowered. “Maybe,” she said, but her tone said, _exactly_.

“Might I speak with you alone?” the captain asked.

The woman looked genuinely torn, but nodded.

“Call if you need anything,” Bard said, ushering poor Sven out before him. At least Tauriel was an Elf; should their little guest turn to violence again, there was little she could do.

\--

This was probably a bad idea, but Lorna didn’t care. The redheaded…Elf…lady had been nothing but helpful, and Lorna had just had the shock of her life.

That Bard was such a ringer for her dead husband that it was downright creepy, and she wasn’t going to be able to talk to him. She felt too guilty over what she’d done to poor Oleg to ask him much, even if he didn’t actually know what she’d done. Hell, _she_ wasn’t entirely sure, but she had a good enough guess, and that was more than bad enough.

She wrapped the blankets around herself, coughing. The mattress was lumpy, but better than her cot at the Institute, and the blankets were definitely warmer. That slightly terrifying lady doctor had got her into some kind of flannel nightgown that she suspected was meant for a child, but it too was warm, which was all that mattered. Her joints felt like they were filled with ground glass, and Christ did her chest hurt.

And yet it was better than the bloody Institute.

The Elf-lady – and God, did Lorna have an issue with that word, with that _concept_ – drew up the rocking-chair, and sat facing her. “What happened to you?” she asked.

Lorna frowned. “I do not have the words,” she said, and it was very true. Westron, so far as she could tell, had no equivalent for ‘telepath’.

“You had _no_ words before,” the woman pointed out, her green eyes a little too piercing. “You did not understand me at all, so why do you now?”

“ _I do not have the words_ ,” Lorna repeated. “This bloody language, it’s like nothing I’ve ever heard,” she added in English, frustration bleeding into her voice. “I haven’t got all’v his, and I have to hunt to translate every damn thing you say!” Her words were lost in a fit of coughing that nearly made her choke, an ugly wheeze beneath it. She’d had pneumonia once, and she’d be very surprised if this wasn’t it. Somehow, she doubted this place had anything like antibiotics, so she might well be fucked. Great.

For the first time, the Elf-woman looked uneasy. Lorna couldn’t blame her, since this cough half sounded like a cat trying to gack up a hairball.

“I do not know where I am,” she managed. “Or how I got here. I have friends I must get to, but they are not here. They are in danger.”

“From the one who did this to you?” the woman asked.

Lorna nodded. “He will do worse to them, when he finds I am gone. I do not know how I went.” The word for ‘escape’ was nowhere to be found in what she’d taken from Oleg, and in any event it wasn’t accurate. _She_ hadn’t done this at all, and she’d give her left kidney to know who or what had, and why.

The redhead’s stare was still a little too intense. “I will help you,” she said. “Once you have healed, I will aid you.”

Lorna would have been grateful, except she knew damn well this woman wanted something from her. It didn’t take reading her mind to see that. “Thank you,” she said anyway. “My name is Lorna.”

“I am Tauriel,” the woman said. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

Lorna hoped like hell she was right.

\--

Thranduil detested mysteries, and this one especially.

Reverse-tracking the tiny Edain’s progress was not at all difficult. The maddening thing was the fact that it seemed to have begun out of nowhere.

He could see plainly where she had been lying, the place she had presumably first slept, but there was absolutely nothing leading to it – not a single footprint. It was as though she had been dropped from thin air.

More frustrating still was the complete lack of evidence of any other person. Whoever had tortured her was around here somewhere, but _where_? Nothing could truly evade Elven eyes: not even other Elves. Whoever he was, he had hidden himself well, but there was simply no way he could have hidden himself so completely.

The forest was unusually loud today, dozens of birds calling to one another among the trees. While it was true more had flocked here now that there were fewer spiders, they were rarely this vocal. It was, he supposed, a better sign than if they had all vanished.

If the Edain woman was alive in Dale, perhaps the guards could find some way of communicating with her, and bring him any manner of news that might aid in their search. They could not rest until this monster had been removed. It was probably too much to hope he’d be eaten by a spider.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I agonized a bit over whether Thranduil would think it worth his while to make an impromptu visit to Dale himself, and decided that he probably wouldn’t. Yes, he’s had this strange creature running around in his forest, but he’s got a kingdom to run, and guards he trusts to take care of things on this errand. Lorna’s creepy, but she didn’t actually hurt anyone; he’s more worried about whoever messed her up so badly, since that person is probably still in the woods. Given that Von Ratched is actually on Earth, they’re not going to find anything, but that won’t stop them looking.
> 
> As I said in chapter one, something occurred to me that didn’t when I was writing _Ettelëa_ (and I don’t know how many GiME writers it has occurred to): Lorna’s been dropped into a world full of pathogens to which she has no immunity. Now, in the Wood-Elves’ halls she wouldn’t have been exposed to as many, but all the other humans were, and I missed some storytelling opportunities by not playing with that.
> 
> Tauriel does in fact have some ulterior motives in wanting to help Lorna, but they’re not nasty. She’s also dead right about Lorna’s paranoia about pale eyes.
> 
> Title means “Frustration” in Irish. As ever, your reviews give me direction.


	4. Eipidéim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Lorna is an unwitting instigator of doom, Dale’s healers begin to panic, and Thranduil gets very, very bad news.

Lorna, for the sake of her own sanity, decided to believe that her friends had to be running around all over here, too. If she didn’t, she’d do nothing but fear what Von Ratched might be doing to them, and it would drive her mad.

Not that she did a great deal of thinking. For the next three days, her fever was so high that she spent most of them in a semi-conscious dream state, achy and miserable.

The redhead – Tauriel – had to report back to her creepy King, but left one of her soldiers. Menelwen was a pretty woman – Elf – who looked a few years younger than Lorna herself, auburn-haired, with clear grey eyes. She mostly sat beside Lorna’s bed, monitoring her, probably bored out of her skull.

The fever finally dropped on the fourth day, though it didn’t break, and Lorna actually managed to eat a little – some kind of stew, though the meat tasted strange to her. She also had a standing wash-up and a change of clothes, and while it wasn’t enough to make her feel really _clean_ , it was better than nothing.

“I need to wash my hair, when I can,” she said, shivering as she wrapped herself in all her blankets again. Even when she’d lived in her van, she hadn’t gone _this_ long without a shampoo. God, what did they even use here? Probably just plain soap. That would take forever, but at least her gran had told her you could get the residue out with vinegar. Of course, without conditioner, it would probably take hours to comb. At least her period wasn’t due for another fortnight, because she highly doubted they’d even heard of tampons.

Her eyes narrowed when she regarded Menelwen, seated by the fire as she sharpened a truly beautiful knife. “Your hair is suspiciously clean,” Lorna said. “There’s no way you’re washing it with just soap.” There was some English garbled in there, but the Elf would probably get the gist of it. “I’ll teach you to swear in Irish if you give me shampoo. My hair feels bloody awful.”

The Elf arched an eyebrow. “You do not use soap?”

“Not this kind, no.” More English. Oh well. “We have what we call shampoo. It is…liquid?” That wasn’t the word she wanted, but ‘goo’ was unappetizing and inaccurate. “And conditioner, to make it easy to brush.” She didn’t get a chance to say more – once again, she started hacking, that strange, dry, barking sound that made her cringe, and felt rather like her chest was trying to tear itself apart.

“I will see what I may do,” Menelwen said, rising. “Drink your water.”

\--

Menelwen wasn’t about to tell the Edain woman, but she was rather worried. 

The healer, Astrid, had told her that pneumonia was a survivable disease, but Lorna was so very sick – and now Sven, the male healer, was ill himself.

Menelwen knew little of the Edain and their diseases, but she _did_ know that they all too frequently died of them. If Lorna died, she could tell the Elves nothing of the person she escaped, or where she came from. This was the first day she’d been anything like lucid since her arrival in Dale. Menelwen’s entire task was to extract information, and if she couldn’t do that, the King would be…displeased.

The healers had a large store of athelas, though its healing properties were markedly less effective outside the hands of one of the Eldar. Menelwen was little more than a battlefield healer; she was trained to deal with wounds, not illness, which was likely why her efforts to treat Lorna had been both difficult and only partially successful. Yes, the woman’s fever was down, but it was far from gone, and the cough remained one of the uglier sounds Menelwen had ever heard a living being produce. It sounded… _alien_ , in a way she couldn’t hope to describe, and sent a shudder down her spine every single time Lorna made it.

But all Edain illnesses ran their course, provided they didn’t prove fatal. One way or another, this had to end eventually.

\--

Getting Lorna’s hair washed was not an easy proposition, but the feeling of a clean scalp was worth it. Yeah, she shivered worse than ever, even with the fire built up, but Menelwen’s mystery shampoo made it easy to comb. The act of brushing her hair had always soothed Lorna – as long as it wasn’t Von Ratched doing the brushing. In that case, gross.

She’d been so worried about what he might be doing back on earth that she had not, until now, given thought to just what damage he could do _here_. The Elves weren’t human, so they might be immune to him – but that wasn’t a certainty.

But how could she explain that to Menelwen? She wasn’t kidding when she said she didn’t know how to say it in Westron, because Westron literally didn’t have the word – and she sure as hell wasn’t going to share it mentally.

Still, she had to say _something_. The needed some form of warning, however garbled. She looked at Menelwen, who was now cleaning her boots, bathed in firelight. Whatever oil she was rubbing into them wasn’t half as stinky as one might expect.

“The man,” Lorna said, searching for the words, “the man where I am from, the one who hurt me – he is dangerous. _Very_ dangerous. This language, I cannot translate right, but in mine we call it telepathy. He can read minds, and hurt them – and control them.” Like hell was she going to mention that she could technically do the same thing. She was in no condition to be thrown out on her ear.

Menelwen looked at her, those piercing grey eyes searching hers. She probably didn’t believe it, but that wasn’t Lorna’s problem. What the Elf did with the warning was her own business; Lorna’s job was simply to give it. Her only method of convincing anyone was something she refused to do, and not just because she could all too easily hurt someone in doing it. Her instinctive violation of Oleg’s mind was bad enough. “Explain.”

“They are…curses,” Lorna said, again searching for the word. “What I did, with the trees, is also a curse. No one knows where they came from, or why. One day, we are normal; the next, we are cursed. Where I was, before I was here, they were – testing – us.” No Westron for ‘experimentation’. “They want to know why, and how, but all they do is hurt us. _He_ hurts us, even though he is like us.

“I do not know how I came here. I do not know how long I will stay, but if I am here, others may come. And he is not the only dangerous one, though others might not mean to be.”

Menelwen tilted her head, inviting Lorna to continue.

She had to pause to cough, but eventually she went on. “Most of us, we do not control what we have. We do not know how. I barely have control of mine, but it is better than I had.”

Menelwen frowned, but it was all Lorna could say, because it was all there was to be said. Too many of the other things couldn’t be translated. “Lorna, when you are well, I want to take you to the Woodland Realm. You must tell this to the King.”

Lorna shuddered. She didn’t need to ask if the King was the one with the creepy eyes – nobody else would be riding a creature like that horned thing. “Do I have to?”

“He will not hurt you,” Menelwen assured her, and sounded as though she believed it. “I know he is intimidating –”

“He’s bloody creepy,” Lorna said in English. Then, in Westron, “It is not his fault, but he looks too much like the man who hurt us all. Especially his eyes.” They were bluer than Von Ratched’s, and they didn’t catch the light like his sometimes did, but they were every bit as pale and cold.

In theory, her telekinesis would keep her safe, but she was still so inept with it. She was lucky she hadn’t brought one of those trees down on herself. And it was of no use at all if she threw around too much, and knocked herself out doing it.

“The King will not harm you,” Menelwen repeated. “He can be cold and harsh, but he is not cruel.”

“Well, I’m not going anywhere yet,” Lorna said, coughing. “If he gets impatient, he can come see me himself.” She’d probably piss herself if he did, but it wasn’t likely. He almost certainly had better things to do.

\--

Astrid initially had little sympathy for Sven and his cold, but after two days, it became clear that it was more than just a cold. After another two, he was too sick to get out of bed.

And after another three, he was not alone.

Their little house of healing was a _little_ house – three rooms for the sick downstairs, and six upstairs. All were now occupied, yet there was still more need.

Astrid and her eldest apprentice, Dagmar, brewed tea of dried feverfew and willow bark, with brandy at night to ease the coughing, but even the Lorna woman had yet to truly improve, let alone the more newly afflicted. Astrid had been a healer for forty-five years, woman and girl, and never seen anything this virulent.

Pneumonia, she knew, could spread, but it rarely did. The good thing about living on that Eru-forsaken lake had been few outside diseases – the traders brought all sorts these days, but until now none had been this severe.

They had to contain it, before it became widespread, but she didn’t know _how_. So far, all who had come down with it had either had contact with Lorna, or with someone who had, but they did not sicken right away. There seemed to be a lag of two to three days – meanwhile, the infected went about their daily life, infecting Eru knew how many more.

Bard’s eldest daughter, Sigrid, had insisted on helping, to Astrid’s dismay – she was crushing dried athelas, a gift from the Elves, though even in Menelwen’s hands it seemed to be doing little. The girl had worked with the healers before, at least; she knew how to carry her weight.

“If people see Father’s not afraid to have me work here, they’ll stay calmer,” she’d said, a stubborn set to her jaw that even Astrid would have had a hard time arguing with.

“ _Is_ he afraid?” she asked.

“Well, yes,” Sigrid admitted. “But I’m twenty – he can hardly stop me.”

While Astrid _could_ argue with that, there wasn’t time, and she really did need the help. Sigrid worked fast and she wasn’t squeamish. More than that, Astrid could not ask for.

The Elf, Menelwen, was possibly the greatest help – though she looked so very grave. She would use the athelas and chant in her beautiful gibberish language, and at first it seemed to work – for a time. Always did the fever relapse.

It was only going to be a matter of time before someone died. Bard disliked asking for aid, especially when they already owed the Elves more than they could ever repay, but he was going to have to.

\--

The city of Dale and its surrounding environs were home to over a thousand people, and those numbers grew by the year. The land around the city had grown fertile since the death of the dragon, and farmer had joined the fishermen and tradesmen.

They knew that some diseases could spread, but they did not know how, and there were none who could tell them. Elves did not sicken, and Dwarven maladies seemed quite different from their own – not that there were many of those. Dwarves didn’t catch colds, and pneumonia was very, very rare.

Dale’s healers knew that many diseases were spread through contact, but not why, or how. They certainly didn’t know why some seemed to spread without any contact at all. Disturbingly, this appeared to be the latter, and Astrid didn’t know why. Within a week, dozens were sick, rapidly depleting the store of herbs and remedies.

And then, terrifyingly, the Elf started coughing.

She at first looked utterly confused, as though uncertain if the sound had come from her. Astrid couldn’t blame her – everyone knew Elves couldn’t sicken.

Those clear grey eyes flicked to her, but the Elf said nothing. What was there _to_ say? Elves didn’t cough. Elves didn’t take ill. She didn’t _look_ ill – her flawless pale skin had no hint of a flush – but she had coughed.

“What are you feeling?” Astrid asked, leading her to the only place anyone could sit down now – the nearly-empty storage cupboard. It was stifling, for they’d kept all the fires burning high, the bitter scent of dozens of herbs stinging in Astrid’s nose. If the elf really was ill, she might not know how to describe her own symptoms.

“Fine,” Menelwen said, still visibly bewildered. “I sense no difference in my hröa – my body,” she clarified. “None at all.”

“And yet you coughed.”

“And yet I coughed. It was a…strange sensation.” She shuddered a little.

“I don’t understand it,” Astrid growled, glaring at the sparse shelves. “It’s _pneumonia_. There’s no phlegm, nothing in the head, but I’ve never seen pneumonia spread like this, and now you’re coughing, which is impossible. What in Eru’s name did Oleg drag here?”

“We need more athelas,” Menelwen sighed, “and a proper healer. I must go to the Woodland Realm.”

“Oh no you don’t, Missy,” Astrid said firmly. “If you somehow _are_ sick, you can’t risk infecting the rest of your people. King Dain can loan us a raven, and hope your King will actually send someone. Once he knows what’s going on here, I wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t.” King Thranduil had been a surprisingly good neighbor, but his own people came first and foremost, as they should. It was the same with Dale, and with the Dwarves. Alliance didn’t extend to suicide on someone else’s behalf.

“He might not,” Menelwen said, “but nor would he stop any who wished to come. If we want to risk our lives, that is our own affair.”

She coughed again, and Astrid’s blood turned to ice.

\--

Ingrid, wife of Sven, at first though little of her cough. It was mild, as was her fever, and a dose of feverfew seemed to tamp both down. Yes, Sven was very sick, but it had been four days since he went to the healers’ houses, and until this morning she had felt fine. It was early enough in the spring that ordinary winter maladies could still be passed around – which meant the children were likely to catch it, too. They always seemed to.

\--

Percy only felt mildly ill when he went to his shift at the gate – chilly, with a slight headache. By noon, he had spiked an impressive fever, and a painful cough. Aldor sent him home, calling up a replacement and ordering him to get some rest. It was not an order he was tempted to disobey.

\--

Bard hated Council meetings, and held as few as he could get away with. There were inevitably many things for him to read and sign, both of which he hated, but the worst was the _arguing_.

The meetings were held in the town hall, and usually drew a crowd of the elderly, bored, or both, but not today. The rows of oak benches, still new enough to gleam, were largely empty, and a good half the Council was missing.

“The last cold of winter, my lord,” Einvald said, coughing into a lace-edged handkerchief. He was a big man, and florid, but his face was even redder today. “Ingmar’s down with it, and the boys.”

Bard frowned. Their newcomer was sick, but she’d been in the house of healing since she arrived. Yes, some of those who dealt with her were now ill, but neither Einvald nor any of his family would have had contact with them. Astrid had called it pneumonia, and she wasn’t known to be wrong, but Bard didn’t believe in coincidences.

“Go home, Einvald,” he said, rising. “The rest of you, I need to know who is sick, and where.” What he was going to do with that information, he didn’t know, but he ought to have it.

He hurried out before anyone could stop him, his eyes sweeping the sun-washed city. The hall stood near the center, high enough that he could see the lower west and south sides clearly.

Dale was never quiet during the day, and he could hardly say it was now. People went about their business – tradesmen, guards, errand-runners of all sorts, the streets still rather busy. They were not, however, quite so busy as usual, and a number of the people who passed him were coughing.

If not for their mystery woman, he wouldn’t be alarmed. It was late in the season for illness, but some cough or other always did seem to get passed around all winter. Like as not it was the same now, but perhaps he had best pay Astrid a visit.

\--

Lorna was aware of nothing that went on outside her room, and little enough aware of what was in it. She’d gained a roommate, a woman every bit as ill as she was, but her fever had spiked again, and she walked now in delirium.

She’d wanted to forget Von Ratched, so naturally it was that which haunted her nightmares. The scent of his office, citrus and spice, the ungodly heat of his fingers as he laid them on her forehead. That was all he’d done, their only point of contact until she attacked him, her telekinesis for the first time somewhat under her control.

She was no stranger to pain, and he _knew_ that, knew he could break her bones without breaking her, so he’d gone into her mind and – and –

No. No, she would not re-live that. Delirious or not, she had enough presence of mind to force it away, for now. Sick and miserable though she was, she tried to wince to the surface of her consciousness. Yes, she was sick – hell, maybe she was dying – but she was free. God knew how far she was from her friends, in this strange place that had somehow drawn her to itself, but she was free, and she wasn’t alone.

She had just enough coherent thought to hope her presence wasn’t getting other people killed, too.

\--

Thranduil was not remotely happy to receive one of Dain’s ravens, and even less so once he read the note it bore.

He stared at the precise writing, too fine to be Dwarven, certain there had to be some mistake. Eldar simply did not sicken. Plagues of old had devastated the populations of the Edain and the Dwarves, but always the Elves remained untouched. Eru had built them so.

He poured himself a glass of wine, setting the parchment on the cluttered surface of his desk. The fires was bright, the room warm, and yet he felt very cold.

The missive, if it was true, left him at something of an impasse. He could hardly be expected to expose more of his people to some alien pestilence, but neither could he abandon Menelwen. Yes, she was only one person, but she was one of his. Elves did not abandon their kin, not unless they had no other choice.

Thranduil had a choice. He had lost enough of his people five years ago – he would not leave Menelwen out in the cold. No, he could not in good conscience _order_ anyone to go to Dale, but he wouldn’t need to. Healers were healers; they went where there was need of them, regardless of the risk to themselves.

He sank into his desk chair, downing half the wine at one go. They had still found no sign of their mystery Edain’s tormenter, and he was beginning to think they weren’t going to. Impossible though it was, she really did seem to have dropped out of thin air.

And had, he was sure, brought this disease with her. Tauriel said she had been sick when the guards’ party had left; there was simply no way this was coincidence. He rather wished they had shot her when they had a chance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How, you ask, is Menelwen sick? Be patient and you will find out.
> 
> So, I’m on rather shaky ground here, medically speaking. You don’t hear much about pneumonia outbreaks because bacterial pneumonia is typically a secondary infection, and while it _can_ be contagious, you pretty much have to hack right in someone’s face – it’s not like a virus, that can actually have a shelf-life outside a host. On Earth, odds of this happening are pretty low, but the result of Middle-Earth bacteria meeting Lorna-germs has basically resulted in a bacterial superbug.
> 
> Now, I’m not anything resembling a medical professional, but I’ve been fascinated by diseases and pandemics since I was a kid (I was a weird kid), so I’m trying to draw on that now. I’ve actually _had_ pneumonia, but it was bronchial, which is a lot less dangerous (though not much less unpleasant) than Lorna’s lobar pneumonia. It’s how I discovered that they essentially make liquid Vicoden – the doctor gave me some so I’d stop coughing long enough to sleep.
> 
> Lobar pneumonia is nasty shit, and is the kind that, without antibiotics, can in fact kill you. Pre-antibiotics, it was one of the leading causes of disease-related death around the world. Fortunately for Dale, the Elves have wonderful medicine, provided they don’t wind up needing it all themselves. It ought to be glad she’s not carrying measles, which has historically wiped out groups of people with no prior contact to it – or even influenza. In 1918 it killed fourteen percent of Fiji in _two weeks_ , and by the end of the pandemic, over twenty percent of the population had died.
> 
> Fortunately for Dale, I’m not _that_ cruel. Lorna might be Typhoid Mary, but at least she hasn’t brought actual typhoid.
> 
> Title means “Epidemic” in Irish. As always, your reviews give me hope.


	5. Plá

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which the Elven healers reach Dale (and find it worse off than they thought), they discover just why Menelwen is ill (and how dangerous it could prove), and Thranduil goes to see just what the hell is going on (and regrets it). Funnily enough, this chapter took so long because I’ve been sick myself.

When the healers made ready to go to Dale, Tauriel went with them.

The King hadn’t wanted to let her – she was, theoretically, needed more in the forest – but Menelwen was one of her guards, and Tauriel left her there. Menelwen’s illness was indirectly her responsibility.

“Very well,” he’d said, “but none of you can return until this malady is spent.”

“I know, my lord. We all do.”

Her little party set off in the salmon light of sunrise – guards and healers on horseback, with two carts of medical supplies. This soon after winter, Dale had to be running low.

Tauriel hoped – oh, she hoped – that the King’s missive was somehow wrong. Anything that could fell one of the Eldar had to be beyond terrible.

It had to be new.

\--

Menelwen was and remained incredibly disturbed.

Still she coughed, but that was _all_ she did. There were no chills, no ache in her joints, and though Astrid had no way of gauging if she had a fever – Elf bodies ran cooler than those of the Edain – they both suspected she didn’t have one. And yet, she coughed.

Many others were not so lucky. The two hall had been given over to the sick, laid out in rows on beds manhandled from various houses. To her sensitive nose, it smelled awful, though she and the other healers did what they could to keep their patients clean. Sheets had been hung between the beds, to give them an illusion of privacy, but the thin fabric did nothing to mask the sound of coughing.

Strangely, not many had died, and Astrid was baffled by the few who had.

“It’s the old and the children you’ve got to worry for, with things like this,” she said. She was scrubbing soiled linen, the water in the tub dyed pale brown. “Yet here we are.”

Here they were indeed. Their three casualties had been in the prime of their lives, for Edain – two men and a woman, all healthy and strong. They had sickened quite suddenly, and within hours, their faces had turned an alarming shade of blue that none of the healers had ever seen before. By the end of the day, they were dead.

Menelwen didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to _do_. Mercifully, some appeared to be recovering, but so very few. Most were lingering, delirious, barely able to take water or broth.

Lorna, incredibly, was still hanging on, though she looked half dead. Her cough had taken on a wet, ugly sound that Astrid said was a good thing – it meant she would be bringing up the sickness in her lungs, and was no longer contagious.

Menelwen went to her now, out of sheer curiosity. Though her face was outright grey, there was a deep flush across her cheeks and nose – her fever still raged, despite their best efforts. A wiry woman to begin with, she now looked skeletal, her eyes sunken and cheeks hollow.

_What did you bring us, ettelëa?_ Menelwen wondered, taking her wrist. Astrid had taught her how to read an Edain’s pulse, and Lorna’s still fluttered like a hummingbird. Her body was fighting this invader tooth and nail, and though it appeared to be winning, it was only just. Her skin felt like a frying-pan beneath Menelwen’s fingers. She had always thought Edain fragile creatures, yet Lorna and several others seemed determined to prove her wrong.

The woman’s vivid eyes, fever-bright, found her, and seemed to halfway focus. She said something, but it was in her own language, or one of them; her occasionally confused rambling seemed to encompass two, one rather more musical than the other.

“You are more trouble than you are worth,” Menelwen sighed in Sindarin.

“Thanks so much,” Lorna slurred – also in Sindarin, albeit with a very heavy accent. 

Menelwen froze. The tiny woman struggled with Westron – why would she know Sindarin? “What was that?”

Lorna spoke again in her own tongue, but at the end of the sentence was, “—was what?” in semi-clear Sindarin. “You miss home, but more are here. I feel them, but I can’t hear them.” The last sentence was a garble of Sindarin and Westron, but still just comprehensible enough.

Menelwen stared at her, the chill of the unknown creeping through her veins. “What _are_ you?”

The woman shrugged, or tried to. “I do not know anymore. Your friends are close,” she added in Westron. “Go find them. I will try not to die while you are away.”

\--

Tauriel had never seen the streets of Dale so quiet. Whatever malady had befallen this place, it was worse than she thought.

Oh, there were a few people about, but the market square was largely closed and deserved, as were the businesses on the trade streets. Everywhere, the doors of houses bore signs that read ‘sickness’ in hasty black letters; even the few that did not were shut tight. There was a strange, funereal silence, as though even the healthy dared not raise their voices.

The lone, wan guard at the gate had waved them through, casting a grateful, greedy eye at their carts of supplies, and directed them to the town hall.

It was a large building, built of stone both old and new, the contrast between the ancient bricks and those used in its repair obvious. Even from the outside she could smell the odd, sour scent of sickness, jarring against the bright spring morning.

This was the first time in her life she had been around true sickness – and being near it in a place that still brought her pain didn’t help. She had no wish at all to be here, but she was Captain, and captains looked out for those under their command.

Menelwen met them at the door, and Tauriel couldn’t tell if her pallor was form illness or simple exhaustion. Her uniform was rumpled, and looked as though it had been slept in, her auburn hair mussed.

She also looked strangely unnerved to see them, so much so that it made Tauriel uneasy. She would have expected abject relief.

“You do not seem pleased to see us,” she said, halting the cart.

“Oh, I am,” Menelwen said. “It’s just – Lorna knew you were coming. She said she could feel you, though she could not hear you, whatever that means.”

That was a little unnerving. If Tauriel was a worse person, she would wish this woman dead. She was not a worse person, however, nor were the healers. However strange and dangerous this little Edain might be, they would tend to her like all the others.

The sour, bitter odor of sickness assailed her even before she entered the hall, so strong it felt like a solid force. The coughing echoed off the high rafters – some dry and hoarse, others deep and wet. The shutters were closed, the lights now, and she wondered how anyone was to recover.

All who followed her wrinkled their noses at the smell, but set to work immediately, fanning out among the rows of beds.

“I’ve done what I can,” Menelwen said, “but it’s not enough. The head healer, Astrid, says she has never seen anything like this. More and more come in every day.”

Tauriel walked the rows, appalled. Some of the Edain looked halfway to Mandos – sweating, grey-faced, curled up beneath what were probably most of the blankets in Dale. There were scores of them, the hall nearly full.

She thought they had gone to Dale overly prepared. Now she did not know if it would be enough.

Menelwen led her to Lorna, and Tauriel wondered how the woman was still alive. She looked the worst of all of them – all the more so when she coughed, and spit pink phlegm into a soiled handkerchief.

Her glassy eyes found Tauriel, and she gave a somewhat vague smile. “Tauriel,” she said. “I wish I had your hair. Always wanted to be a redhead.” The sentence was a mangled mix of Sindarin, Westron, and what Tauriel presumed was her own tongue.

Tauriel sat on the edge of the bed, since there was nowhere else to sit. The woman’s brow was burning, but she seemed semi-coherent. “Menelwen said you could feel us, but not hear us,” she said gently. “What does that mean?”

Lorna struggled to sit up, and failed, collapsing back onto her pillows with a curse. “Menelwen’s projecting,” she said, the word unfamiliar to Tauriel. “I can’t keep her out. Her mind is in mine. You – you’re not.”

It actually took Tauriel a moment to realize her meaning, and then the blood drained from her face.

Most Eldar achieved some level of mental ability with age, but she’d never heard of any of the Edain managing it. She would dismiss it as delirium, if not for the Sindarin. Was that how she had acquired Westron? It made as much sense as anything else, at this point.

“You must explain this to me, Lorna,” she said in careful Sindarin, wondering how much the woman would understand.

It took a moment to get a response. “I do not have the words,” Lorna said at last, in a mingling of Sindarin and Westron. “They are your words. You do not know mine. Menelwen, she thinks she’s sick. Her mind tells her to cough, because she’s afraid.”

Tauriel wished that didn’t make some kind of horrible sense. She knew precious little of the mental arts, but this seemed plausible – provided Lorna wasn’t simply raving with fever. The only thing to suggest she wasn’t was her sudden grasp of Sindarin.

Tauriel rose. “Menelwen, you must go,” she said. “If what she says is true, you should not be near her. Perhaps distance will cure your…malady.” Oh, Eru, let it be that simple. The implications behind Lorna’s ability, whatever it truly was, were terrible, but if it was the cause of Menelwen’s sickness, perhaps it could be easily cured.

Knowing Tauriel’s luck, it probably wasn’t, but still. She could hope.

She shooed Menelwen off, and looked down at Lorna. Mandos was reaching for her, and she stubbornly refused to reach back. She was gaunt, half delirious, and clearly miserable, but she hung on. Whatever her reason, it must be compelling. “I will send you a healer, little one. Do not die in my absence.”

“I’ll try not to.” The final word in the sentence was cut off by an exceptionally deep, wet cough, and Tauriel winced.

She moved carefully through the dimness, wondering how the Edain could still shiver when the hall was so very warm. Never before had she truly given thought to just what it must be like, to be susceptible to illness, but she wondered now how the Edain could rise each morning, knowing there were so many things that could so easily kill them. 

The first thing she had to do was dispatch a raven to the King, telling him of what exactly they’d found. She sat atop one of the carts to write it, grateful for the fresh air, wonderfully cool after the sweltering humidity of the hall. Outside, it still smelled mostly like springtime, the earth awakening after its long winter slumber, unaware and uncaring of what went on above it.

_My lord_ , she wrote carefully, the parchment spread out on a ledger balanced on her knees, _this is not what we thought. It is worse than I feared. If others are willing to come, we could greatly use them. I have some idea what has happened to Menelwen, but it is only a guess, and it will take time before I can be proven right or wrong. I do think it likely that what ails her is not catching._

She thought a while, writing as she went, wishing there was some way to cushion this blow. Not that the King would appreciate it if he did. What he was to do with this information was his own affair, but she would make sure he received it.

\--

Working with these Edain taught Tauriel just how little she truly knew of them. The first time she saw a woman cough up blood, she staggered back in shock, even while she grabbed a cup for the poor woman to spit in.

Sigrid hurried over, took a look at the ruby contents, and sighed with relief. “This?” she said, holding it out to Tauriel. “When it’s bright like this, it’s not as bad as it looks. She’s burst a blood vessel in her throat from coughing is all. It hurts, but it’s only dangerous if it doesn’t stop.” She pulled a green vial out of her soiled apron, and tipped a few drops of it onto the woman’s tongue. “Rest now, Dagmar. I’ll get you some water.”

She hustled Tauriel away, and said quietly, “If they bring up dark blood, _then_ we worry. It means the lungs themselves are bleeding, and that’s almost always fatal. Astrid’s only known two people who have survived it in her entire life.”

Tauriel didn’t point out that that was not, in fact, very much time at all. To Sigrid, it doubtless seemed like forever. The girl was scarcely twenty. With luck and skill, perhaps that number would rise.

The boy they moved on to would not likely be one of them. Tall and lanky, not much past childhood, his freckled face was a strange, dusky shade of blue, his breath wet and ragged. Ríniel, one of the Woodland Realm’s senior healers, knelt beside his squalid bed, bathing his chest with athelas water and chanting, but there was no improvement.

None.

Never had Tauriel see athelas fail in any but the most severe cases of poison, but Mandos had touched this poor boy’s brow, and evidently would not be denied. Ríniel’s face was pale an pinched with effort, her dark hair damp with sweat, but his fëa dimmed with each increasingly labored breath.

Tauriel glanced at Sigrid, who didn’t look surprised.

“His mother’s in here, too,” the girl said quietly. “And his father. We won’t tell them yet.” There was sorrow in her voice, but also resignation. Young as she was, she was somewhat inured to death, in a way none of the Eldar ever truly could be. Between the burning of Esgaroth, the battle, and this pestilence, how many people had she seen die?

Tauriel had seen her comrades slain long before the battle, and mourned every one, but battle was different. This brought creeping horror of a sort she had never before known.

“You’re projecting.”

She jumped, turning. The sound of all the coughing had masked Lorna’s approach, but she stood now at the foot of the bed, wrapped in her blanket.

“You’re projecting,” the little woman repeated, her voice a hoarse rasp in her abused throat. “All’v you. There’s too many now, so many’v you in my head. I’ve got to go somewhere else, before you start coughing, too.”

A good quarter of her words were in her own tongue, but Tauriel was shocked to find she understood their meaning, even though she didn’t recognize them.

Lorna smiled a little, but there was no humor in it. “Telepathy goes both ways,” she said. “Your mind thinks you’re sick because mine’s telling you that you are. I don’t know what will happen if I die while you’re all tie to me, but I don’t think any’v us wants to find out.”

Tauriel froze, ice cascading through her veins. _That_ was a vast understatement.

“Move me,” Lorna said firmly, “and hope like hell it’s just a proximity thing. Otherwise I might not be able to help taking you all with me.” She coughed again – a deep, harsh, sodden sound, so intense it made Tauriel’s chest hurt in sympathy.

“I’ll find somewhere,” Sigrid said, her hazel eyes wide. “Go lay down, Lorna.”

She hurried off, which left Tauriel to get the woman back to her bed. They needed aid that even the eldest of their available healers could not give. She had to write the King again, and pray he could find someone willing to help.

There was simply no way Lorna could be intentionally reading their minds, but if their thoughts were pressing too heavily upon her, she had no way of keeping them out. She needed a shield, but there were few enough in the Woodland Realm capable of building her one.

They would get her moved, and Tauriel would write her letter. She was rather glad she wouldn’t be around to see the King’s reaction.

\--

Tauriel’s first missive had not been encouraging. Her second was terrifying.

Fear was not an alien emotion to Thranduil, for all he would like others to think it was. He feared for his absent son; he feared the shadow that had fled to the east, but never had he thought to fear anything like this.

He set out as soon as he received the letter, packing light, pushing the great elk through the trees and out into the golden sunshine. It seemed wrong, that the weather should smile so when such horror lay ahead of him. The air was cool and fresh, so very alive, but he wondered how much death he was to fin.

He would heal this Edain woman, and hopefully his people along with her, and then he would send her far, far away. Galadriel could deal with her, or Elrond. Oh, he wondered what could have given her such strange powers, but he wasn’t curious enough to endanger his people. She might not intend to be a menace, but menace she was.

The world might be safest without her in it, but even Thranduil couldn’t go _that_ far. It did not sound as though this woman could help being what she was. If he had to, he would pay Bard to have someone take her to Galadriel.

\--

Within the next two days, ten more people died.

It was, Astrid told Tauriel, still a surprisingly low number, but it made it no less difficult to witness. Watching someone drown in their own blood was very different than watching someone fall in battle.

Tauriel mostly worked alongside Sigrid, doing whatever needed doing. They changed linen, fed those who were able to eat, and arranged doses of the medicine brought by the Elven party. The Edain healers and their aides moved with admirable precision, but morale was low, especially among the Elves. For now Menelwen was not the only one who coughed.

Tauriel had developed one herself, and it was the strangest sensation she had ever known. It was a bit like what happened if one inhaled water – Sigrid had said that that too was technically coughing – but there was nothing actually in her lungs. Her chest constricted, and her breath refused to draw properly. It was wearisome, if not precisely painful, and so alien it made her shudder.

They moved Lorna, installing her in Bard’s house with a rotation of healers to keep watch over her, but thus far, distance didn’t seem to do anything about this unwelcome connection.

And then the Dwarves came.

They knew nothing of how to heal Edain, but they took over all the business that had faltered in the wake of the pestilence, so that all might not go to ruin before the Edain were well.

Balin, the elderly, white-haired Dwarf who had traveled with the Company, sought her out, and found her brewing a concoction of herbs on a small, portable stove outside the town hall.

“King Dain’s sent us with provisions, lass,” he said. “I’ve given them over to Bard. Are you well here?” He didn’t mention Kili, but he didn’t need to.

“I am,” she said, or started to; the ‘am’ turned into a cough, which turned into a series of hacks that left her doubled over, wheezing.

Balin let out a string of what could only be cursing in Khuzdûl, grabbing her arm to steady her. “Mahal, I’d hoped Ori was wrong,” he said, his face pale and stricken.

“The King is coming,” she said, when at last she could manage it. Her chest felt like it was burning from the inside. “He knows what he must do, to cure this.”

“Never thought I’d be glad to see the forest fairy,” Balin muttered, and she choked on a laugh. “Rest, lass. Unless it needs your Elf magic, Dori can take over a while.”

“I can’t rest just yet,” she said. “I must look in on Patient Zero.” She’d pulled the term from Lorna’s mind – or rather, it had pulled itself. She said that they were projecting, but so was she, and Tauriel could do without some of the memories that came out of her mental ether. What had been done to her mind in her own world was horrifying, beyond monstrous in the eyes of the Eldar – and unfortunately, the one who had done it really did bear a superficial resemblance to the King. It was no wonder she’d been so terrified of him.

Tauriel would have to warn him of it, before he set to work on her, for her memories also revealed a truly spectacular temper that was best not dealt with in real life. In and of herself, she couldn’t hurt any of the Eldar, but with that thing she called telekinesis, she wouldn’t need to touch anyone to break every bone in their body.

The coughing fit seemingly over for now, Tauriel headed up the cobbled street to Bard’s house. Mercifully, he and his daughters had thus far been spared – his son had been apprenticing with the Dwarves when the malady struck, and remained in Erebor. She hoped they would take Tilda as well, though there would be no prying Sigrid from the healing wards.

Having the Dwarves here was a relief for more reasons than one: their presence meant the city was not so unnaturally _quiet_. No longer did it seem quite so much like a tomb, for it rang with the strident voices of bakers, street cleaners, and whoever else had decided to venture forth from the mountain.

When she reached Bard’s house, she found it very warm, yet Lorna was still bundled up on her bed beside the fire. Galasríniel sat with her now, coughing every so often – the golden-haired healer wasn’t much older than Tauriel, and seemed to have taken a liking to the tiny Edain, incoherent though she often was.

Currently, she appeared to be unconscious. Her fever had lessened, if not by much, and her periods of lucidity were sporadic, but at least she was no worse.

“Has she woken at all?” Tauriel asked, collapsing onto the spare armchair. It was fat, and surprisingly comfortable for Edain furniture, though the fabric was a scratchy brocade.

“No,” Galasríniel sighed. “But she’s had nightmares about – well, I’m sure you’ve seen it, too.”

“I have,” Tauriel said, shutting her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose. “And I dread what might happen if that man finds his way here as well.”

“If he had, I’m sure we would know by now,” Galasríniel said, though she didn’t entirely sound as though she believed it. “Is the King sending someone?”

“He’s coming himself, or so his raven said. I only hope we are all still alive when he gets here.”

\--

The Dale Thranduil found was not as he had ever seen it, before or after the dragon.

Most notably, it was filled with Dwarves, and only a few Edain among them. It made sense, and it was only logical of Dain to send them, but it was still irksome.

They were loud, of course, but there was a strange quality to their noise – one that, in any other race, he would have thought to be slightly desperate. They moved through a city that felt disquietingly like a tomb.

He spotted Faelon, one of Tauriel’s lieutenants, crossing the main street with an armload of clean linen. The Elf looked exhausted, but bowed when he spotted Thranduil – and coughed.

Thranduil had seen many, many horrifying things in his life. Dagorlad was perhaps the worst of it, but also there was Doriath, and countless battles and campaigns between the two. He had seen his people slaughtered, had watched is father’s head split in two, and yet somehow, watching Faelon cough was the worst of all. It was alien, it was _wrong_ – just what manner of creature was this supposed Edain? What could _do_ this?

He would heal her, yes, and disengage her from the minds of his people, but then he might just kill her after all. The world was already filled with perils; it did not need one such as this.

“My lord,” Faelon said, still coughing. “Tauriel said she had written to you.”

“Where is she?” he asked, without preamble.

“Bard’s house, I think. We put Lorna there, in the hope that distance might make a difference.”

“Clearly, that has not worked,” Thranduil said, trying to mask his fear with sourness. “Go rest, Faelon. I will deal with this.”

“Yes, my lord,” Faelon said, though it was obvious he had no intention of doing so. He likely had no time.

Thranduil spurred the elk onward, ignoring the Dwarves that glared as they scattered out of his way. He would need to see Bard at some point, but that could wait until he had finished this task.

He found Bard’s house quiet, the man himself absent. Tauriel met him at the door, however, every bit as pale and weary as Faelon. “Thank Eru, my Lord,” she said, sagging with relief as she stood aside to let him in. “I trust you have seen some of what we are dealing with.”

“Very little,” he said, passing through the doorway. It opened into the kitchen, a large room that still managed to feel somewhat cramped, thanks to all the rows of pots, pans, and Eru knew what else hung upon the walls. “How many of you are like this?”

“Too many,” she sighed, crossing the floor to the sitting-room. Thranduil had to duck a low-hanging smoked ham to follow her. “By now, I do not know if any are not.”

Bard’s sitting-room, he found, was large and airy, the pale stone of the walls lit gold by the sunshine streaming through the northern windows. It was also extremely warm, the fire burning high in the grate, and yet the tiny figure on the makeshift bed still shivered.

Looking at the little Edain, Thranduil wondered how she could possibly still be alive. She looked so like a corpse that he would have thought her one if not for the light of her fëa, which was still stubbornly bright. Her eyes were open, but he didn’t know how aware she was.

“I should warn you, my lord, your eyes will frighten her,” Tauriel said quietly. “I have seen some of her memories, and yours are very like those of the man who did all that was done to her before she arrived in the forest.”

Thranduil looked at her, and caught her slight shudder. There was a story there, and he would have it, once this was over. “I will take care,” he said, though he didn’t really mean it. While he would never intentionally inflict distress on someone who didn’t deserve it, this exasperating creature had not earned undue mercy, either. Unless she dropped one of the armchairs on his head, there was little in the room she could hurt him with.

He knelt beside the bed, regarding her. She really did look wretched, and if she was more than peripherally aware of his presence, she didn’t show it. However, when he brushed a tangled knot of hair out of her face, her eyes widened, snapping to him, and she recoiled. With rather admirable speed for one so ill, she shot one hand out, grabbed his collar, jerked forward—

And slammed her forehead right into his nose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Thranduil. Tauriel _did_ warn you. Now, anyone who’s read _Ettelëa_ knows that bad things happen when Lorna’s telepathy touches Elf minds, but it’s not going to manifest itself quite the same way here. In _Ettelëa_ , Thranduil dug through her mind with the express intent of finding something, and that desire only got augmented. Here, nobody actually wanted to get into Lorna’s head; they were just freaking out and she couldn’t keep them out, so the effect will be different.
> 
> I discovered the thing about coughing up bright blood versus dark blood the hard way – when I had pneumonia I coughed so hard I burst a blood vessel in my throat, and it scared the ever-loving shit out of me, my husband, and everyone else in our house. No, I wasn’t hacking out streams of it, but there was enough that I just about peed myself. The ER doctor said that’s actually more common than most would think.
> 
> Title means ‘Pestilence’ in Irish. As ever, your reviews give me life and hope.


	6. Cuimhne

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Thranduil and Lorna properly meet, and neither enjoys it much. Note: Thranduil witnesses Lorna’s mind-rape in this chapter. While it’s not terribly explicit, it could be triggering, and it’s followed by some fairly graphic violence when she gets her revenge.
> 
> I lost the better part of this fucking chapter the first go-round. I really ought to just stick to writing it all out longhand first, because God did that piss me off. I spent far too long yelling at my laptop and scaring my cat.

Well. Thranduil certainly hadn’t expected _that_.

If he had been Edain, the woman might well have broken his nose, she hit him that hard, sending white-hot pain jagging through what felt like every nerve in his face. Then, of course, she fell right off the edge of the bed, half-stunned and probably concussed.

Tauriel helped her up, trying to calm her, but the little woman was having none of it – she was babbling in her own language, giving Thranduil a look that was equal parts hostile and terrified, coughing all the while. He glared right back, gingerly touching his nose; at least she hadn’t hit hard enough to make him bleed.

His irritation morphed into deep discomfort when _Tauriel’s_ words shifted into that alien tongue – not with ease, no, but that she could speak it at all, after so little time, was beyond disturbing.

That of all things seemed to soothe the woman, whose wide eyes flicked form him to Tauriel, even as she coughed all the harder, her gaunt frame wracked with them. This was the creature who was such a danger to so many of his people? Looking at her, he felt rather cheated. Surely someone capable of being such a peril to the Eldar should be remarkable in some way. Oh, her eyes were unsettling, but beyond that, he would not have spared her a second glance.

“Stay out of my mind,” she said, looking back at him. Her voice was so hoarse, her accent so heavy that the words were almost incomprehensible, but they were most definitely Sindarin.

“I will not harm you,” he said, though honestly, the ugly, petty side of him rather wanted to. That he still possessed that side irked him, but even at his age, he had yet to let it go. “You are making my people ill.”

She shut her eyes. “I know,” she said. “But there are too many’v you in my head already.” Scrubbing a hand across her face, she looked back up at him. “Does it hurt?”

“It will not,” he said, trying to summon gentleness and largely failing. “No more so than it does already.”

Her hands – such tiny hands – shoved her tangled hair out of her face. “No,” she said, “does it hurt? That?” To his utter horror, she pointed at the left side of his face.

Thranduil froze. The glamour was firmly in place, so firmly that none save perhaps Lady Galadriel should be able to see through it. There were few left in Middle-Earth who knew about the wound, and not even the healers who had come to Dale were among them. “Tauriel, Menelwen – go,” he ordered.

“My lord, I don’t know how wise that would be,” Tauriel said warily. It was rare that she directly challenged him anymore, but in this case, he really couldn’t blame her. While this bedraggled creature would have a difficult time harming him, she had no compelling reason not to attack him again.

“ _Go_ ,” he repeated. “I will not hurt her, and she cannot hurt me.”

Go they did, with rather blatant trepidation. Surprisingly, the tiny woman didn’t throw a fit over it – she was too busy looking at his face, her fever-glazed eyes bright with curiosity. While it was something of a blessing that she wasn’t completely revolted by what she saw, the fact that she could see it at all both maddened and unnerved him.

“Does it hurt?” she repeated, and coughed again before turning aside to spit in a china mug. What she brought up was, he noted with distaste, tinted red.

“No,” he said, and didn’t try to touch her when she hauled herself back up onto her bed. “No, that ceased long ago. What are you, Ettelëa?”

“Ettelëa. Stranger. Fits, I guess,” she said, with a grim smile. Unsettlingly, her teeth were smeared red. “I don’t know anymore. I just want them all out’v my head.”

Thranduil arched an eyebrow at her. “I cannot accomplish that if you attack me again,” he chided. How her mind had not collapsed under the strain of invading Eldar thoughts, he didn’t know, but he wanted to find out. Edain were simply not meant to have any ability of the mind, and yet she very obviously did. He couldn’t dismiss it as anything else.

“You scared me,” she said, unrepentant. “You look too much like him. Your eyes do, I mean. What he did…too many’v you bastards’ve seen already.” Her words were a churning mix of Sindarin and her own tongue, but he thought he understood anyway. She curled in on herself, hugging her knees, a thunderstorm brewing in her unnerving eyes. Pushing her, he was certain, would not be wise – not if he actually wanted to accomplish anything without knocking her unconscious.

“I need not pry,” he assured her. “I must only construct you a shield.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’ll pry anyway,” she said, and coughed. “You want to know too much. You’ll get in, and you’ll dig.”

If it wasn’t impossible, he’d swear she was reading _his_ mind. “And how would you know that?” he asked, rising and drawing over one of the armchairs.

“Because your eyes are just like his,” she said, resting her chin on her knees. Her hair fell around her like a shroud of silver-threaded darkness, smelling faintly like lavender in spite of how dirty and tangled it was. “He wants to know, too. We’re animals to him – and I’m an animal to you.”

Loath though he was to admit it, she was perilously close to being right. The battle five years ago, and the subsequent rebuilding of Dale, had taught him to attach some value to the lives of mortals – but, really, only to those of Dale. These Edain were his neighbors, people with whom he allied and traded. This tiny woman was nobody, attached to no one he had cause to care about, who, even if she survived this illness, would be dead all too soon anyway.

“That you are mortal does not make you an animal,” he said. “I have no want nor need to hurt you, Ettelëa. That you have imperiled my people is not your fault.” Which was not precisely true; she had, after all, brought this pestilence with her, though even he had to concede she had not done it of malice aforethought.

“Lorna,” she said, coughing. “My name is Lorna, and you’ll dig anyway. You do what you need to do, your kingliness, but you’re not going to like what you find.”

Her complete lack of faith in his integrity was really quite insulting. “This will be easier on you if you lie still,” he said, not bothering to challenge her assertion.

“That’s what she said,” Lorna muttered, an expression he did not understand. Lay she did, however, and flinched a little when he laid a hand on her face. Edain were warmer than Eldar, but her skin positively burned beneath his fingertips.

_He had no intention of dipping into her mind, but he had little choice: no sooner had he touched it than it assaulted him with shocking force. There was no order to it, and he suspected it wasn’t conscious; thanks to all the other invading thoughts, her mind was freewheeling. Memories and thoughts hit him at random – memories of things he had never before seen or imagined._

_"Welcome to the circus," Lorna muttered, wrenching the door shut. Now that she wasn't running, she was chilled through, her temper growing fouler by the second. "Come on, come_ on _."_

_The engine coughed again, and roared to life when she floored the accelerator. Even yet she hadn't quite got the hang of American cars -- from her perspective, everything was on the wrong side -- and she fumbled with the gearshift before she got it into reverse. The tires, nearly bald, squealed and slipped on the wet pavement, sending the entire bus lurching to the right._

_"You actually_ drive _this thing?" her companion asked, gripping the dashboard._

 _"More or less. Live in it, too." She winced as the undercarriage scraped the curb. "_ What _are you doing?"_

_He was, in fact, rifling through the pockets of his huge overcoat. "Grabbed this off one of the goons," he replied, pulling out a handgun. "Not much, but it's loaded."_

_Lorna snorted in disbelief. "When did you manage that? And just what is it with you Americans and guns?"_

_He did something that made the gun go click. "I'll give you the lecture later. Will this thing actually make it up this hill?"_

_"Oi, no insulting my ride." She leaned forward to wipe the condensation off the windshield, but all she did was smear it around. The ancient windshield wipers didn't do her any favors, either.  
A stray thought hit her brain -- not words, but an image. Somebody was very nearby, and they were looking right at her bus._

_\--_ there you are _–_

 _"Oh,_ shite. _" A fresh burst of adrenaline filled her veins as she stomped the gas again. The engine protested when she slammed it straight into fourth gear, pealing up the hill with another screech of tires. "Is that thing loaded? 'Cause I think we might need it in a minute."_

_"Well, fuck." The window squeaked as he rolled it down, and rain immediately blasted in._

_"Where?"_

_"Don't know. Close, somewhere ahead'v us on the left." Lorna's heart was in her throat again, anger joining the adrenaline in a red-hot wave._

_"Head right at the stop sign. If we can reach the freeway, we're golden."_

__Yeah, if, _she thought. The intersection was momentarily empty, and she prayed she wouldn't hit anyone who might be approaching._

_The bus shuddered again when she turned hard right, and for a second she was afraid it would tip over. What was that bloody game her nephew played -- Grand Theft Auto? It was a lot less fun in reality._

_There weren't any cars, but there was, at the next intersection, a police barricade. She had no space to pull a U-turn, even if she thought the bus could handle it. The thing looked unmanned, so she kept the accelerator floored._

_"What the hell are you doing?!"_

_"Hang on."_

_"To_ what _? My own ass?"_

_Lorna didn't answer, because there was no answer to be given. The wooden barrier splintered apart when she hit it -- whatever else might be said of her bus, it was sturdy as a tank -- and she gave a triumphant laugh. "Pog mo thoíne, jacknob. Shut the bloody window, will you? I think you can put the gun away."_

_"What does that mean?" he asked, struggling with the window. The icy blast of rain couldn't be helping his grip._

_"'Kiss my ass'." It was amazing, really, what you could get away with saying in America; she'd yet to find a single person who spoke a word of Irish. More than once in her panhandling, she'd sung songs made up entirely of curses, and nobody knew the difference._

_\--_ ran the damn barrier. Are they even worth it _–_

 _"Oh, come_ on _," she growled. "They just don't quit, do they?"_

_She didn't get to finish the sentence. The front tires blew with a sound like an explosion, a deep, echoing boom far louder than it ought to be. The bus pitched forward, back tires actually lifting off the pavement, and Lorna's stomach lurched with it._

_The steering wheel refused to respond -- the bus careened wildly, spinning what felt like a hundred and eighty degrees. Lorna barely had time to recognize the second crash, and less time to register pain, before she flew at the windshield and everything went black._

_Thranduil twitched, even as he summoned the will to form her shield. Her powers of recall were not so keen as an Elda’s, but they were still shockingly acute, so much so that the phantom pain of her crash tore through him._

_The memories fragmented again, pelting him at random while he worked. A frigid wasteland; running; flying machines; choking gas, and then another, horrifying in its clarity –_

_Lorna’s return to consciousness was wholly unwilling, her head pounding with every beat of her heart. Her lungs were on fire, her every muscle one giant ache._

_She was lying on some kind of gurney, her wrists shackled to the metal railings, and the realization made her heart plummet. “Oh, focáil an uile rud,” she swore, her voice little more than a rasp._

_“Don’t bother, Donovan.” It was Von Ratched’s voice, and the sound of it made her heart plummet yet further. It was deceptively calm, almost mild, and that was more terrifying than overt anger could ever be. “You’re not going anywhere this time.”_

_“Focáil tú sa chluas,” she growled, blinking hard. Her eyes stung horribly, her vision blurred as they watered freely. She heard Von Ratched rise, his footfalls all but silent as he approached._

_“I admit, I am at something of a loss as to what to do with you, Donovan. You cost me two pilots, hours of wasted time, and a decent portion of my Institute. Tell me why I should not just kill you."_

_Her eyes focused a little more, glaring at him even through her weariness. "Go ahead," she whispered. It sounded like she was speaking through a throat full of sand._

_He leaned over her, one hand on either of the gurney's rails. "You really mean that, don't you?" he asked, visibly intrigued. "You truly would not mind if I killed you."_

_She shook her head, still glaring. "At this point? No."_

_He straightened, pacing the room. "I could always kill Ratiri," he said, "or Katje. I suspect, however, that would only cement your stubbornness. I believe you would see them as martyrs, and fight me all the harder. Torturing them would likewise only enrage you."_

_She tried to follow his progress, but barely managed to turn her head as he went to a drawer and took out the hairbrush. He moved like a fucking predator, this stupidly tall man with his unnaturally pale eyes, and she wanted nothing more than to rip his head off and shit down the hole. He drew his armchair around the head of the gurney and pulled the snarled mass of her hair over the edge, and went to work, careful not to pull or tug. "I think I have figured something out about you, Donovan," he said, almost conversationally. "You are proud of your ability to deal with injuries and violence, giving and receiving. You count it a sign of hard-won strength, and I must agree -- it is. In any other situation I would admire it, and in a sense I must even now, however counter it runs to my purposes."_

_She was tilting her head, trying to look at him, and he sighed, leaning over her so he could meet her eyes. "There are worse things than pain, Donovan," he said quietly. "Things in which you would take no pride. I do not want you to drive me to them, because even I have standards. And they would destroy you," he added, brushing her tangled bangs back from her forehead. Now, finally, she flinched, a kind of terror she’d never before known surging through her._

_"I'm not going to rape you, Donovan," he said. "I certainly don't want to, but I would not need to. The things I could do to your mind would be so much worse."_

_She felt the blood drain from her face, and he sat again, going back to work on her hair. "I would find even those distasteful, though. Even monsters such as myself have limits, and that is mine. I have been called a sadist, but I do not fit the true definition of the term -- I take no physical satisfaction in the pain I cause."_

_Horror crawled along her skin, but with it came rage, searing and welcome, pounding the terror into something she could actually deal with. She’d brought down the roof in the rec room; surely she could do that again here. It might well kill them both, but it was a risk she was more than willing to take._

_"I did warn you, Donovan," he said, setting aside the brush and twining his hands in her hair._

_"Don't you bloody_ dare. _" She lashed out, wildly, but she was weary down to her very bones, and what she summoned wasn’t anywhere near enough._

_"I am sorry you drove me to this, Donovan," he said, and he actually meant it._

_She was sure he'd meant to hurt her with this, in spite of his words, and she was horribly surprised when he did exactly the opposite. Insidious pleasure, wholly unwelcome, shivered along her nerves, sparking into something that had her gritting her teeth against a moan. She held very, very still, trying to shove it away, to bury it beneath the heat of her wrath, but she was_ failing _, and failing horribly._

_"Stop it," she said, but the words were more gasp than growl._

_"Only if you stop fighting me," he said, grave._

_"You can't -- you -- you can't make --" Oh, she wished saying that would make it true, but even with Liam she’d never felt like_ this _._

_"Yes I can," he said, his fingers shifting in her hair. "I hope this is a lesson I will only have to teach you once."_

_Lorna shuddered, but it was still partly revulsion, the dissonance between the sensations he forced upon her body and the loathing in her mind almost more than she could bear. She snarled at him in Irish, a string of incoherent curses that trailed off into something visceral and wordless. Now she simply couldn't hold still, but she couldn't escape, either._

_He didn't make her suffer long, at least. She bit her lip and somehow avoided crying out as he guided her senses over the edge, into a delirious flood of bliss. It left her boneless, and livid with hatred for him and for herself._

_Lorna shut her eyes, refusing to look at anything as he guided her back down to normal. "I told you the truth, Donovan," he said, smoothing back her hair, "I did not want to do that, and I do not want to have to do it again."_

_To that she said nothing, nor did she move. They stayed like that a long while, he with his hand on her forehead, her with her eyes resolutely shut. She fought to gather her thoughts, her_ self _, to process anything but the aftermath of that horrible, exquisite feeling. She struggled for anything resembling strength – and unfortunately for Von Ratched, she found it._

 _Her eyes snapped open, a wrath not hot but frozen heaving through her like water from a breached dam. Lorna had always had a truly vicious temper, but never until now had she really, truly wished to_ murder _someone before. The cold numbed her horror even as it fed her ire, strengthening her, destroying her weariness and all the weakness that went with it._

_For the first time, Von Ratched actually looked disturbed, his face gone quite pale. She bared her teeth in a death’s-head grin, an almost sub-audible growl at the back of her throat as she regarded him, willing him to drop dead. She felt him reach for her mind again, and very nearly laughed when he slammed into her wall of ice, crashing headlong into the barrier he would never breach again. Lorna would die before she’d let that wall fail a second time._

_Her telekinesis, it seemed, wasn’t entirely useless; it let her rip her arms free of the restraints, though she knew the force of it would bruise later. Without stopping to think – without any conscious thought at all – she launched herself at him._

_She must have startled him, because he failed to dodge her, or fend her off. Lorna leapt on him like an infuriated cat, sinking her teeth into his neck and tearing like a mad badger, her fingers scrabbling for his eyes. The rage had her now, vicious and almost euphoric as her teeth broke his skin, flooding her mouth with the hot, sickening, coppery taste of blood. She’d kill him, but first she’d make him_ hurt _._

_He grabbed her, naturally, trying to break her grip, but she was having absolutely none of it. He’d pry her loose when she was dead and cold, and not a moment before, goddammit. Her teeth gouged deeper, right down into the muscle, chewing like every zombie in every horror movie she’d ever seen._

_That was as far as she got, before darkness took her._

Thranduil recoiled, his shield only half-completed. It took a great deal to nauseate an Elf, but he had not felt so sickened since Dagorlad. His very skin felt foul, as though coated in some filthy toxin. To invade the mind of another without permission was sacrilege in and of itself, but what that man had _done_ ….

“Told you you wouldn’t like it.” Lorna’s harsh, abused voice snapped him back to reality, filled with an echo of that frigid wrath. Her eyes were twin wells of green poison, cold and almost reptilian. “Had a good look, did you? You and every other fucking Elf in this backward fucking world.”

For once in his very long life, Thranduil had no idea what to say. What could _anyone_ say, in the wake of that? He had faced many a horror, but no one had ever force him to enjoy it. He felt as though he should say something comforting, but it was simply not in his nature – and even if it had been, no words would be sufficient.

“Are you gonna finish what you started, or _what_?” Lorna snarled, struggling to sit up. The words weren’t entirely comprehensible, but her meaning easily was. “Pity me and I’ll break your fucking neck.” Such was the vehemence in her tone that he had little doubt she would try.

What left Thranduil’s mouth surprised even him: “Did you kill him?”

The question seemed to stymie her rage a little, though instead it brought a harsh, bitter laugh, accompanied by a stream of coughs. “I doubt it,” she said, wrapping her blanket tighter around herself. “Son’v a bitch is like a cockroach. He’ll not be dead until someone’s stomped on him.”

Thranduil didn’t know what a bitch was, nor a cockroach, but her meaning was taken easily enough.

“He can’t get in my head anymore, so how the fuck did you people manage it?” she added, glowering at him.

“You are very ill,” he said, “and our minds are stronger than those of the Edain. It is only a wonder yours has not broken under the strain.” Indeed, he had little idea how it hadn’t; he suspected it was down to pure stubbornness. Certainly, that had to be how she was still alive, given how ill she really was.

Her glare took on an extra edge, her hands gripping the edges of the blanket so hard her knuckles went a bloodless white. How could someone so tiny exude so much rage? Her wrath, within that memory, was every bit as intense as his could be, concentrated and narrowed into a needle-fine point. No, she was not nearly as strong as an Elda, but her capacity for sheer viciousness unnerved him.

“Kindly do not attempt to rip my throat out,” he said. “That looked rather unpleasant.”

“Don’t talk down to me,” she snapped.

“I was not,” Thranduil said, and meant it. “If that man did not die of what you did, I would be very surprised. Elves are immortal, Ettelëa. That you could not defend against us implies no weakness on your part. Even the youngest here is at least ten times your age.” He didn’t know just how old she was, but there wasn’t an Elf in Dale below five hundred.

 _That_ at least seemed to mollify her. A little. “So what now?” she asked, coughing.

“I must finish what I started,” he said, again striving for something like gentleness, and again largely failing. “When you are well, I would have you return with us to the Woodland Realm. From what I have seen of your world, you would be ill-suited to life in Dale – and if any more from that place should arrive in my forest, it would be better if you were there.”

Lorna regarded him with open suspicion, and rightfully so; while he meant what he said, he was also voraciously curious about her world. He wanted more, and he needed time to convince her to allow it.

“Fuck with me and I’ll rip your kidneys out,” she warned.

For the first time, Thranduil smiled. “Duly noted.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In _Ettelëa_ , Lorna had been spared the Institute, and thus didn’t have such an intense well of rage to deal with. She is, needless to say, rather damaged. What neither she nor any of the Elves yet realize is just how much her mind has damaged _them_ , too.
> 
> What she says in the memory Thranduil sees is “Oh, fuck everything” and “fuck you in the ear” in Irish.
> 
> Title means “Memory” in Irish. As always, your reviews give me hope and direction.


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